It’s been two weeks since the Republican Party sued the secretary of state and attorney general, alleging that two Republican candidates were unfairly denied spots on the Nov. 7 general election ballot and that the Democrats illegally placed a candidate on the ballot.
The party asked a district judge in
“Judge Sanchez should have set a hearing date by now,” said Republican Party spokesman Jonah Cohen.
At the heart of the lawsuit is the allegation that the Democratic secretary of state and attorney general are treating members of their own party different than Republicans. I asked Cohen if he suspected the same from the judge.
“All five justices of the New Mexico Supreme Court are Democrats. Out of the 10 judges of the N.M. Court of Appeals, eight of them are Democrats. And all of the judges in the
First Judicial District — where we filed the case — are Democrats, totaling seven,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Naturally, Republicans are concerned politics may be playing a part. How can we not be? On Sept. 27, we asked for an emergency hearing, a perfectly reasonable request, and still we haven’t received a date.”
“To our mind, the court system is frequently corrupt due to its political lopsidedness,” he wrote. “One party rule is a bad thing, whether it’s Democrats or Republicans.”
At issue in the lawsuit is the secretary of state allowing Democrats to place Hector Balderas on the ballot for state auditor and denying Republican attempts to place Roger Gonzales of Mora on the ballot for Balderas’ House seat and Barbara V. Johnson of
The two joined the party in filing the suit against Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and Attorney General Patricia Madrid. Since ballots were already being printed, they requested the emergency hearing.
Though it’s not unusual to have to wait a couple of weeks or longer for a hearing to take place, in my experience judges in Las Cruces respond to requests for emergency hearings almost immediately.