{"id":17708,"date":"2010-05-24T20:39:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T02:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=17708"},"modified":"2010-05-24T23:09:56","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T05:09:56","slug":"montoya-says-public-financing-fight-may-not-be-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/montoya-says-public-financing-fight-may-not-be-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Montoya says public financing fight may not be over"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_16899\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 275px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16899\" title=\"Montoya, Dennis W.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Montoya-Dennis-W..jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"249\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dennis W. Montoya<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Hours after the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state\u2019s denial of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denniswmontoya.com\/\">Dennis W. Montoya\u2019s<\/a> application for public financing, Montoya said the fight may not be over.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are federal rights involved here, especially\u00a0First Amendment Rights, however, and we may well not be finished with litigation,\u201d said Montoya, who is challenging state Appellate Judge <a href=\"http:\/\/www.votevanzi.com\/\">Linda Vanzi<\/a> in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n<p>In March, the secretary of state\u00a0said Montoya exceeded the $5,000 limit on what publicly financed candidates can contribute to their own campaigns and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/03\/judicial-candidate%e2%80%99s-application-for-public-financing-rejected\/\">rejected his application<\/a> 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, \u201cchances are quite likely that I would not have gotten on the ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHad I received this funding, I would have felt obliged to spend much of it responding to the opposition\u2019s vicious and slanderous hate mail, which really distracts from campaigning on the real issues, so to that extent the ruling is a good thing,\u201d he said.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Montoya and Vanzi have been locked in one of the nastiest judicial contests in recent memory. Vanzi has put out three mailers highlighting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/high-court-asked-to-immediately-suspend-montoya\/\">ethical scandals<\/a> dogging Montoya.<\/p>\n<p>Though the court\u2019s disciplinary board has formally brought charges against Montoya and is seeking his immediate suspension, Montoya contends he has acted appropriately. He\u2019s responded in part by accusing Vanzi of racism and sexism.<\/p>\n<p>Montoya referred to ethnicity again in the statement he provided today following the Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have achieved many things in 55 years as a Hispanic person of modest and humble beginnings, including becoming a\u00a0civil rights lawyer\u00a0rated \u2018Distinguished\u2019 by Martindale Hubbell,\u201d Montoya said. \u201cI intend to achieve election to the\u00a0New Mexico\u00a0Court of Appeals\u00a0as 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYet, we have nevertheless responded, and we continue to gain in our informal, non-scientific polls,\u201d he said. \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hours after the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state\u2019s denial of Dennis W. Montoya\u2019s application for public financing, Montoya said the fight may not be over.<\/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-17708","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\/17708","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=17708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}