{"id":194151,"date":"2016-10-05T20:17:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T02:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=194151"},"modified":"2016-10-05T22:38:33","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T04:38:33","slug":"barred-from-fundraising-during-session-some-forget-to-disable-web-donations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/10\/barred-from-fundraising-during-session-some-forget-to-disable-web-donations\/","title":{"rendered":"Barred from fundraising during session, some forget to disable web donations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_56542\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-56542\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse-771x504.jpg\" alt=\"A statue outside the Roundhouse in Santa Fe.\" width=\"771\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse-771x504.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse-336x220.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse-768x502.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse-1170x764.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Kids-at-Roundhouse.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A statue outside the Roundhouse in Santa Fe.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>A Democratic state senator and a Democratic candidate for the Senate admitted <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_1442028566\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Wednesday<\/span><\/span> that they didn\u2019t immediately disable fundraising mechanisms on their websites during the special session, when legislative candidates are barred from soliciting money.<\/p>\n<p>Both acknowledged soon\u00a0after the state Republican Party filed an ethics complaint against them that active fundraising links had remained on their websites for several days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe messed up. We made an error, and as soon as we saw that we took it down,\u201d Sen. Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces, said in a phone interview. He said he did not receive any online contributions during the prohibited fundraising period.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.santafenewmexican.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>. NMPolitics.net is paying for the rights to publish articles about the 2016 special legislative session from the newspaper. Help us cover the cost by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/donate\/\" target=\"_blank\">making a donation to NMPolitics.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Greg Frazier, a candidate in Albuquerque Senate District 21, admitted to a technical violation. He said he had instructed a surrogate to remove a \u201cdonate\u201d link from his website before Gov. Susana Martinez called the special session last Thursday. Frazier said the surrogate removed the \u201cdonate\u201d link from the top of his\u00a0webpage\u00a0before the governor&#8217;s proclamation, but the link then reappeared on the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe turned it off in one spot but it was missed in another spot,\u201d Frazier said. Like Soules, he said it was a mistake and that he did not receive any contributions during that time.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans also filed a complaint against Sen. Daniel\u00a0Ivey-Soto,\u00a0D-<wbr \/>Albuquerque, who says he did nothing wrong.\u00a0Ivey-Soto said he disabled the fundraising link on his\u00a0webpage\u00a0before the special session began.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking by phone <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_1442028567\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Wednesday<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0Ivey-Soto said he removed from his website any possibility to contribute money to his campaign in anticipation that the governor would call the special session. He said it is not a violation of the Campaign Reporting Act for lawmakers or candidates to maintain a fundraising button or link as long as it does not allow visitors to actually contribute money.<\/p>\n<p>The state Democratic Party has filed a complaint of its own against Rep. Nora Espinoza,\u00a0R-Roswell, who is running for secretary of state, saying she also maintained a \u201cdonate\u201d option on her website after the session was called.<\/p>\n<p>Espinoza\u2019s campaign manager, former state Sen. Rod\u00a0Adair, said <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_1442028568\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Wednesday<\/span><\/span> that the donation button on Espinoza&#8217;s website was disabled before the session started. He provided an affidavit from the technician who did the work. The affidavit identifies the technician as Espinoza&#8217;s colleague, state Rep. Kelly\u00a0Fajardo, R-Belen.\u00a0Fajardo\u00a0said complaining Democrats relied on an &#8220;old link&#8221; that they had saved from an email or a solicitation made before the ban on fundraising for the special session.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One possible issue in the complaints is a provision of the Campaign Reporting Act that prohibits legislators or public employees from soliciting contributions during either a regular legislative session or after the governor\u2019s proclamation calling a special session.<\/p>\n<p>Ivey-Soto said the back-and-forth complaints are \u201cgotcha\u201d politics in an election cycle and distract from the purpose of the special session. Martinez called the session Sept. 29 to address a budget deficit of $220 million from the fiscal year that ended in June and a projected deficit expected to reach $430 million in the current budget year. Martinez also added a package of crime-and-punishment bills to the agenda.<\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0Ivey-Soto\u2019s case, the Republicans\u2019 complaint stems from the fact that his website still has a \u201cdonate\u201d listing, though it only leads to a link that says, \u201cThe page you were looking for is not found.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A random search <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_1442028569\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Wednesday<\/span><\/span> of some 20 other websites of lawmakers from both parties revealed a handful who still had \u201cdonate\u201d or \u201ccontribute\u201d links, including Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, and Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe. But as with\u00a0Ivey-Soto\u2019s\u00a0webpage, those links led to pages that no longer exist or to a message that says the candidate is not currently accepting contributions.<\/p>\n<p>Viki\u00a0Harrison,\u00a0executive director of the campaign watchdog group Common Cause New Mexico, said a \u201cdonate\u201d or \u201ccontribute\u201d link in and of itself is not a cause for concern, as long as it does not give people the chance to give money during the prohibited period.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am so happy that when you click on those links they go nowhere \u2014 to a dead page,\u201d she said <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_1442028570\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Wednesday<\/span><\/span>. \u201cI don\u2019t think there is a problem there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said little has been done to update the Campaign Reporting Act in the past 20 years and that lawmakers need to look at the issue of websites in an age of advancing technology.<\/p>\n<p>Ken Ortiz, spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Winter, said his office had received letters of complaint from both political parties regarding improper fundraising. He said the office will evaluate each complaint.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are a lot of possible issues,\u201d Ortiz said. \u201cIs the website still active where you can contribute? Has it been disabled? There are some that say \u2018donate\u2019 but when you click to donate nothing happens because the page is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Soules said he thinks legislators may have to remove donation pages from their websites to avoid any conflict with the Campaign Reporting Act.<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact Robert\u00a0Nott\u00a0at 505-986-3021 or\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:rnott@sfnewmexican.com\" target=\"_blank\">rnott@sfnewmexican.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Ortiz, spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Winter, said his office had received letters of complaint from both political parties regarding improper fundraising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[708,3250,107],"class_list":["post-194151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2016-election","tag-2016-legislative-session","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194151","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=194151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}