Magistrate candidate’s petition signatures challenged

A Democratic voter has filed a challenge in district court to the petition signatures filed last week by Frank Rivera, a candidate for Doña Ana County magistrate judge.

Nancy Abeyta is seeking to disqualify Rivera, a Democrat, from the race on the grounds that he didn’t submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot, her attorney Greg Valdez said. Valdez filed the request in district court in Las Cruces on Friday.

A hearing has not been scheduled.

Valdez said there are three problems with Rivera’s signatures. Many are from individuals who aren’t registered Democrats, at least two are duplicates, and one includes a signature but no other information about the person who signed.

Valdez said he didn’t know offhand how many signatures on the petition are invalid, but said it was enough to remove Rivera from the ballot, if a judge agrees with his legal arguments. To get on the ballot in the magistrate race, a candidate had to file 128 signatures of registered Democrats living in the county. Rivera filed 182 signatures.

Rivera said he didn’t gather most of the signatures himself but was surprised to learn of a potential challenge when one of his opponents, Democrat Maria Rodriguez, asked to meet with him a week ago. The two met at a restaurant in Las Cruces. Rodriguez went over his petitions with him and showed him what she said were problems, Rivera said.

She then asked how he wanted to handle the situation, and if he wanted to drop out of the race. Rivera said he told her he would think about it. When she called him Wednesday evening, he told her to challenge the signatures if she wanted to.

“We just decided we’re going to let this run its course and see what happens,” Rivera said.

Rodriguez said she’s not involved in the challenge to Rivera’s signatures, but confirmed that she met with Rivera last week and that Abeyta spoke for her at a meeting of the Progressive Voter Alliance in January. She said Abeyta brought the signature issue to her attention, so she sought the meeting last Monday with Rivera.

“It could have the appearance that I tried to strong-arm him, but I didn’t,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just that when I found out about it, I wanted to share it with him so he could have an opportunity to decide what to do. Even when we looked at it, he admitted that some of the signatures weren’t valid.”

Rodriguez said she told Rivera she wouldn’t personally challenge the signatures but didn’t know what others would decide to do. State law gives any registered Democrat living in the county the right to challenge a petition in this Democratic primary, should he or she choose.

“My focus is to campaign and win an election that I believe I’m qualified to win,” Rodriguez said.

The other candidates in the Democratic primary for magistrate judge are Francisco Ortiz and incumbent Kent Wingenroth.