A nonprofit facing the possibility of being forced to comply with the state’s campaign finance reporting law threatened on Saturday to sue if that happens.
New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO) and its parent organization, the Center for Civic Policy, made the threat in a news release that came in response to Friday’s strongly worded release from Attorney General Gary King in which he stood by his office’s prior assertion that NMYO’s activities have crossed the line between policy lobbying and political campaigning. King said the secretary of state needs to force the group to comply with the reporting law.
“The attorney general’s statement that he recognizes what can be regulated on the basis of whether it ‘walks like a duck’ is an indication that he doesn’t understand the law in this area, and he is inviting entirely unnecessary litigation against the State of New Mexico,” John Boyd and Sara Berger, attorneys for the groups, said in the news release.
They were responding to King’s Friday statement that mailers NMYO sent out were not lobbying materials designed to influence the coming special session, as the groups assert, but campaign materials designed to influence the June primary.
“There’s an old saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck,” King said in his release. “And I think we know a duck when we see one.”
Boyd and Berger said the U.S. Supreme Court has “made it abundantly clear that election officials are only permitted to regulate public statements that explicitly address elections. They are not permitted to regulate public statements that relate to officeholders’ conduct, even though those officeholders may be running for re-election.”
“This is fundamental to the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech,” the attorneys said.
Eli Il Yong Lee, executive director of the Center for Civic Policy, said in the news release that the group is “disappointed by Attorney General King’s uncharacteristically glib assessment of a serious matter.”
“At stake is the ability of nonprofits throughout
The history
The attorney general’s office sent a letter to the secretary of state on May 22 that advised the office to change NMYO’s status to subject it to the Campaign Practices Act. That followed an April 25 letter in which the secretary of state said NMYO was a lobbying organization not subject to the act.
The Center for Civic Policy sent a letter to the secretary of state disputing the AG’s opinion, and the AG asked the secretary of state to hold off on taking any action. The deputy secretary of state told the New Mexico Independent that the AG’s office told him “to disregard (the letter) or set it aside. I don’t remember the exact terminology. The message was, ‘We’ve decided that is not our final say.’”
The Friday release from the AG’s office stated, “If the deputy secretary of state thought we had instructed him to simply ignore our letter, then that was a misunderstanding on his part of what was said.”
“Despite some reports to the contrary, we fully support our earlier position in a letter that the secretary of state’s office needs to tell (NMYO) to immediately comply with the law,” King said in the release.
The Independent later quoted the deputy secretary of state as standing by his previous quote.
Despite the AG’s advice, the secretary of state’s office hasn’t changed the status of NMYO. Phil Sisneros, spokesman for King’s office, said Friday that the AG is reviewing the Center for Civic Policy’s letter because it is “doing the due diligence on this,” but the AG is firm in his position. Sisneros said there’s no timeline for the completion of that review.
By way of disclosure, I also write for the New Mexico Independent, which is owned by the Center for Independent Media in