The secretary of state\u2019s office has drafted a letter it plans to send Monday morning to New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO), a nonprofit the attorney general\u2019s office says must comply with the state\u2019s campaign reporting laws.<\/p>\n
James Flores, spokesman for the secretary of state, did not reveal information about the content of the letter but said the office\u2019s attorneys are reviewing the letter before sending it via certified mail on Monday.<\/p>\n The news follows an afternoon meeting between officials from the offices of the secretary of state and attorney general about the situation. The attorney general contends that mailers the group sent shortly after the regular legislative session — two to three months before the June primary — targeting several lawmakers, including three who lost, crossed the line between issue advocacy and political campaigning.<\/p>\n Because of that, the AG\u2019s office contends, the nonprofit must register as a political committee and regularly report contributions and expenditures publicly, just like candidates, campaigns and political action committees.<\/p>\n The group contends the mailers were issue-based and aimed to influence the special session of the Legislature, not the primary election, and have threatened to sue if the secretary of state changes their status.<\/p>\n \n By way of disclosure, I also write for the New Mexico Independent<\/a>, which is owned by the Center for Independent Media<\/a> in The secretary of state\u2019s office has drafted a letter it plans to send Monday morning to New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO), a nonprofit the attorney general\u2019s office says must comply with the state\u2019s campaign reporting laws. James Flores, spokesman for the secretary of state, did not reveal information about the content of the letter but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581","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=3581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}