Pete Domenici Jr.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Domenici Jr. plans to voluntarily release information about contributions to his campaign at least monthly, his spokesman says.
“We have no problem with monthly reporting of all contributions. If we can do it more than monthly we will,” Domenici spokesman Doug Antoon told NMPolitics.net.
That would go well beyond what the law requires. Three other gubernatorial candidates — Democrat Diane Denish and Republicans Susana Martinez and Janice Arnold-Jones — have already gone beyond what the law requires in terms of campaign finance transparency, while the other two — Republicans Doug Turner and Allen Weh — have not.
Antoon said the Domenici campaign “would like to shoot for semi-monthly or bi-weekly” reports of contributions, “if we can handle the paperwork and have the people available to post everything on that timetable.”
The campaign has not reported whether any campaign contributions were collected before Domenici’s formal entry into the race on Sunday.
State law requires candidates to file their first campaign finance reports of the year by April 12. Denish, however, has been voluntarily releasing reports quarterly — even in off-election years when it’s not required — for some time, and she did it again last week. Martinez matched Denish last week in voluntarily releasing a report of contributions and expenditures for the fourth quarter of 2009.
Arnold-Jones has gone well beyond that in terms of disclosure of campaign contributions. She recently posted on her campaign Web site information about every contribution she’s received to date, and she is keeping the list of contributions current.
But unlike Denish and Martinez, Arnold-Jones has not been releasing information about campaign expenditures more often than state law requires.
The most recent reports filed by Turner and Weh came in October, at a required reporting deadline. Turner told NMPolitics.net last week that he doesn’t know if he’ll voluntarily release a campaign finance report this month or any time before the next one is required. Weh has not answered the question about whether he’ll voluntarily release a report this month.
St. Cyr is a contributing writer for this site and a reporter at 770KKOB.com. He can be reached at peter.stcyr@gmail.com.