{"id":32795,"date":"2011-10-13T15:54:11","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T21:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=32795"},"modified":"2011-10-13T15:54:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T21:54:16","slug":"king-defends-accepting-15000-contribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/10\/king-defends-accepting-15000-contribution\/","title":{"rendered":"King defends accepting $15,000 contribution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Attorney General Gary King (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

Attorney General Gary King<\/a> is defending his acceptance of a campaign contribution of $15,000 some 11 months after a law capping donations at $5,000 took effect.<\/p>\n

Even though his campaign is active, King says he\u2019s not currently a candidate for office so he can accept more than $5,000 to pay down debt. But others say he still shouldn\u2019t have taken the contribution.<\/p>\n

From The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The easy legal solution is that it applies to candidates in elections 2012 and after,\u2019 King said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon. \u2018And I am not a candidate. I went back and read the act this afternoon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKing, a Democrat, added that his GOP opponent in last year\u2019s attorney general race also could accept contributions of $5,000 or more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat isn\u2019t Republican Matt Chandler\u2019s reading of the law.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018The law is very clear that any funds that were raised after Nov. 3 could not exceed $5,000 per election cycle,\u2019 said Chandler, the district attorney in Clovis, who tried to unseat King last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteven Robert Allen, executive director of New Mexico Common Cause, a good-government organization, allied with King during a multiyear effort to enact limits on what contributors could give to political campaigns in New Mexico. The New Mexico Legislature passed the law in 2009 after years of New Mexico being one of a handful of U.S. states that didn’t restrict money going into political campaigns.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018When we worked on this law, the Attorney General\u2019s Office worked on this with Common Cause,\u2019 Allen said. \u2018We wanted this to cover both candidates before an election and public officials after an election. Common Cause’s intention was to put the limit on the amount of money that could be given by a private interest to an official decision-maker. That is why we have this law. If that isn\u2019t the purpose of the law, then what\u2019s the point?\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also criticized King, saying the donation might be illegal and, regardless, there\u2019s an appearance issue King should have considered. From my commentary<\/a> on the subject:<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Mexico was supposed to be done with an era in which voters had to consider whether large contributions were affecting the decisions of their elected officials. King\u2019s office even stated, in\u00a0the fiscal impact report<\/a>\u00a0for the bill that eventually became the new contribution limit law, that \u2018placing limits on political contributions is the most effective vehicle for addressing the current \u2018pay to play\u2019 scandals.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cLegalities aside, of all the statewide elected officials to not think about the appearance this donation would create, our top crime fighter, the man charged with rooting out corruption, the official who should be the most conscientious about leading by example on ethical issues, is doing the opposite.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter applying the $15,000 donation, King still has $248,000 in unpaid campaign debt, and it\u2019s all money he loaned his own campaign. Following King\u2019s logic, someone could write a check for almost a quarter of a million dollars, and it would be OK because it\u2019s past debt from a different era when the size of donations wasn\u2019t limited. And the money would pass through King\u2019s campaign before going directly to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould such a donor expect something in return, such as the AG\u2019s office backing off a civil lawsuit or not indicting a corrupt public official?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The secretary of state is investigating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attorney General Gary King is defending his acceptance of a campaign contribution of $15,000 some 11 months after a law capping donations at $5,000 took effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[223,224,111,107],"class_list":["post-32795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-campaign-finance","tag-gary-king","tag-open-government","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32795","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=32795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}