{"id":17013,"date":"2010-05-07T11:03:30","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T17:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=17013"},"modified":"2010-05-10T07:28:57","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T13:28:57","slug":"judicial-candidate-dogged-by-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/judicial-candidate-dogged-by-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Judicial candidate dogged by controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Dennis W. Montoya<\/p><\/div>\n

Court of Appeals candidate\u00a0Dennis W. Montoya<\/a> has cancelled a weekend fundraiser after a TV station reported that a man convicted of bribing a public official was helping him raise money.<\/p>\n

That man, Curtis Slade, was listed on Montoya\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> as a host of the party that was to be held for Montoya\u2019s campaign this weekend, KOB-TV\u2019s Jeremy Jojola<\/a> reported. Montoya, a Democrat who is challenging Judge Linda Vanzi<\/a> in the June 1 primary, says that Facebook message was a mistake. He told Jojola that Slade wasn\u2019t a host of the event, but the event was to be held on Slade\u2019s property.<\/p>\n

Slade was convicted years ago of bribing a public official for a permit from the Bureau of Land Management, and he\u2019s currently facing separate felony charges of writing worthless checks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Montoya Family regrets\u00a0to inform our supporters, friends and relatives that we are cancelling
\nthe campaign \u2018Matanza\u2019 scheduled for Saturday, May 8th, 2010, due to\u00a0slanted news coverage that would have potentially rendered the event\u00a0dangerous or unpleasant for those attending,\u201d the Montoya campaign wrote on its Facebook page and in an e-mail to supporters.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not even close to the end of Montoya\u2019s troubles. On Thursday a district judge rejected his appeal of the secretary of state\u2019s denial<\/a> of his application for public financing, The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a> is reporting. In March, the secretary of state\u00a0said Montoya exceeded the $5,000 limit on what publicly financed candidates can contribute to their own campaigns.<\/p>\n

You can read the judge\u2019s order here<\/a>. Montoya was quoted by The New Mexican as saying he will appeal the judge\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

Of course, those issues pale in compassion to the potential trouble Montoya could face before the state Supreme Court. Earlier this week, the state disciplinary board accused him<\/a> of misconduct including fraud, deceit, lying to the court, having a conflict of interest, failing to adequately represent a client and failing to adequately account for and distinguish client funds from his own.<\/p>\n

The charges are serious. In addition to being potentially damaging to his campaign for judge, they could threaten his future as an attorney. And, were the Supreme Court to take the extreme step of stripping him of his law license, Montoya would no longer be eligible to run for judge.<\/p>\n

Montoya has pledged to fight the charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Court of Appeals candidate Dennis W. Montoya has cancelled a weekend fundraiser after a TV station reported that a man convicted of bribing a public official was helping him raise money. But that\u2019s not even close to the end of Montoya\u2019s troubles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,161],"class_list":["post-17013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-judiciary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}