A Democrat who was disqualified from running for a magistrate judgeship in Do\u00f1a Ana County because he\u2019s not an attorney is still trying to get on the ballot.<\/p>\n
Paul Martinez has asked the state Court of Appeals to reverse a district court ruling disqualifying him. Read his appeal here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last week, a district judge affirmed<\/a> Do\u00f1a Ana County Clerk\u00a0Lynn Ellins\u2019<\/a>\u00a0disqualification of Martinez and one other magistrate judge candidate because they aren\u2019t attorneys. The New Mexico Supreme Court did the same<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Martinez says the Supreme Court\u2019s decision was only to force lower courts to decide the matter and create a record for the high court to consider if the matter came back to it. That\u2019s why he asked the Court of Appeals to intervene.<\/p>\n As of\u00a0the 2010 Census<\/a>, the county\u2019s population is over the 200,000 threshold that triggers a state law that requires magistrate judges to be attorneys. Do\u00f1a Ana County\u2019s official population in 2010 was 209,233.<\/p>\n The Legislature passed\u00a0a bill<\/a>\u00a0in 2011, sponsored by Rep.\u00a0Andy Nu\u00f1ez<\/a>, an independent from Hatch, that would have raised the threshold to 250,000, but Gov.\u00a0Susana Martinez<\/a>\u00a0vetoed it.<\/p>\n Paul Martinez\u2019s argument essentially appears to be that the governor didn\u2019t have the authority to veto the bill because it passed with more than the two-thirds support required to override a veto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Democrat who was disqualified from running for a magistrate judgeship in Do\u00f1a Ana County because he\u2019s not an attorney is still trying to get on the ballot.<\/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":[156,115,161],"class_list":["post-39163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2012-election","tag-dona-ana-county","tag-judiciary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39163","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=39163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}