Dennis W. Montoya
Hours after the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state’s denial of Dennis W. Montoya’s application for public financing, Montoya said the fight may not be over.
“There are federal rights involved here, especially First Amendment Rights, however, and we may well not be finished with litigation,” said Montoya, who is challenging state Appellate Judge Linda Vanzi in the Democratic primary.
In March, the secretary of state said Montoya exceeded the $5,000 limit on what publicly financed candidates can contribute to their own campaigns and rejected his application for public financing. Had he not spent more of his own money than what the secretary of state and high court say was allowed, Montoya said, “chances are quite likely that I would not have gotten on the ballot.”
“Had I received this funding, I would have felt obliged to spend much of it responding to the opposition’s vicious and slanderous hate mail, which really distracts from campaigning on the real issues, so to that extent the ruling is a good thing,” he said.
Montoya and Vanzi have been locked in one of the nastiest judicial contests in recent memory. Vanzi has put out three mailers highlighting ethical scandals dogging Montoya.
Though the court’s disciplinary board has formally brought charges against Montoya and is seeking his immediate suspension, Montoya contends he has acted appropriately. He’s responded in part by accusing Vanzi of racism and sexism.
Montoya referred to ethnicity again in the statement he provided today following the Supreme Court ruling.
“I have achieved many things in 55 years as a Hispanic person of modest and humble beginnings, including becoming a civil rights lawyer rated ‘Distinguished’ by Martindale Hubbell,” Montoya said. “I intend to achieve election to the New Mexico Court of Appeals as a poor Hispanic. In a way, that is the entire point of my campaign for election. My meager finances do not compare to the by now over $200,000 from monied interests, chiefly lawyers and law firms, used by the opposition in its campaign, in large measure to hurl vicious accusations and innuendo at me while working to ensure that I have no funds with which to respond or campaign.”
“Yet, we have nevertheless responded, and we continue to gain in our informal, non-scientific polls,” he said. “This will be a first for New Mexico: a financially challenged, rural Hispanic winning a judicial election against an extremely well-funded, politically uber-connected non-Hispanic darling of the elite.”