{"id":20872,"date":"2010-08-25T08:13:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=20872"},"modified":"2010-08-25T08:13:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T14:13:12","slug":"there%e2%80%99s-new-turmoil-in-herrera%e2%80%99s-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/08\/there%e2%80%99s-new-turmoil-in-herrera%e2%80%99s-office\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s new turmoil in Herrera\u2019s office"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s new turmoil in the Secretary of State\u2019s Office. The Santa Fe New Mexican\u2019s Steve Terrell is reporting that Public Information Officer James Flores has been placed on paid administrative leave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Deputy Secretary of State Francisco Trujillo confirmed to Terrell that Flores was placed on leave on Aug. 18. But he wouldn\u2019t go into details because \u201cit\u2019s a personnel issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flores is supposed to return to work today, Terrell reported.<\/p>\n

Flores has been the office spokesman since Secretary of State Mary Herrera<\/a> took office in 2007. Flores had taken time off just before being placed on leave to attend funerals for two family members.<\/p>\n

Such turmoil is nothing new. Earlier this month<\/a>, Office Administrator Manny Vildasol, who secretly recorded video in Herrera\u2019s office, said he had turned the video over to the FBI because it shows \u201cissues of criminal activity and unethical behavior.\u201d He was also placed on administrative leave.<\/p>\n

Vildasol made his comments to KOB-TV reporter Gadi Schwartz, who included the allegations in a report about Herrera\u2019s laptop computer being\u00a0infected with viruses<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Terrell also recently reported on Herrera filing public records requests<\/a> to try to obtain e-mail communication between some of her staffers and critics of her who work in various county clerk offices.<\/p>\n

When he quit in March, then-Elections Supervisor A.J. Salazar authored\u00a0a scathing resignation letter<\/a> in which he wrote that Herrera runs \u201ca crooked organization.\u201d He said at the time that he turned his allegations over to the attorney general. A number of former employees have\u00a0backed up some of the allegations<\/a> made by Salazar.<\/p>\n

Herrera, a Democrat, is facing Republican\u00a0Dianna Duran<\/a> in November. Concerns about the way Herrera runs the office have prompted one prominent Democratic county clerk, Valerie Espinoza of Santa Fe,\u00a0to support Duran<\/a>. And Do\u00f1a Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins, another Democrat, has expressed concern about\u00a0whether Herrera can win re-election<\/a> because of the allegations against her.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be looking in-depth at Herrera\u2019s troubles in the NMPolitics.net newsletter that goes out to qualifying donors<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s new turmoil in the Secretary of State\u2019s Office. The Santa Fe New Mexican\u2019s Steve Terrell is reporting that Public Information Officer James Flores has been placed on paid administrative leave.<\/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":[108,107],"class_list":["post-20872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20872","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=20872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}