{"id":4455,"date":"2009-04-09T23:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T05:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/claim-by-herreras-spokesman-may-be-false\/"},"modified":"2009-04-09T23:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T05:13:00","slug":"claim-by-herreras-spokesman-may-be-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/04\/claim-by-herreras-spokesman-may-be-false\/","title":{"rendered":"Claim by Herrera’s spokesman may be false"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As far as elections and elected officials go, Herrera hasn\u2019t come close to issuing more administrative rules than past secretaries of state<\/span><\/p>\n

In an article I published earlier today<\/a>, I quoted Secretary of State spokesman James Flores as saying his boss, Mary Herrera<\/a>, has \u201cissued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may not be true, at least as far as the administrative rules go.<\/p>\n

Check out the New Mexico Administrative Code\u2019s section on elections and elected officials on the code\u2019s official Web site<\/a>. In there you\u2019ll find a list of rules. Near the top, each one indicates the year it was put in place, and that can be used to determine which secretary of state enacted it.<\/p>\n

Herrera has, thus far in her tenure, brought forth two new rules related to elections and elected officials. By comparison, during her three terms in office, former State Rebecca Vigil-Giron<\/a> enacted nine, and former Secretary of State Stephanie Gonzales enacted six.<\/p>\n

It was Santa Fe County Deputy Clerk Denise Lamb, a former head of the state elections bureau under Vigil-Giron, who pointed that out to me today in an e-mail. She said it shows that Flores\u2019 assertion \u201cdoesn\u2019t pass the barest scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flores has not responded to an e-mail request for a response sent this afternoon.<\/p>\n

After checking out the information Lamb sent me, I wasn\u2019t quite satisfied that Flores\u2019 statement was erroneous. So I jumped on the administrative code\u2019s Web site this evening and began scrolling through the entire thing<\/a>. Honestly, I don\u2019t have the time or desire to read every administrative rule in the state — there are way too many for that — but I scrolled through most sections and clicked on any that appeared to be related to areas in which the secretary of state might be involved.<\/p>\n

I found three other rules issued by secretaries of state that aren\u2019t election-related: a Vigil-Giron rule related to filing provisions under the uniform commercial code, another issued by Vigil-Giron related to the \u201ccentral filing of security interests for agricultural products,\u201d and one issued by Herrera related to the ability of notaries to perform \u201celectronic notarial acts.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, can I say with certainty that Flores was wrong? No. But Vigil-Giron is way ahead of Herrera by my tally and Gonzales is also leading Herrera. It appears that most rules promulgated by the secretary of state\u2019s office relate to elections and elected officials, and I\u2019ve already counted those.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let you know if Flores gets back to me.<\/p>\n

The context for all of this is that Lamb\u2019s boss, Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa<\/a>, is considering challenging Herrera in the Democratic primary next year because, she claims, Herrera has done a poor job in her first term as secretary of state. Espinosa said in the article published earlier today that the only \u201csaving grace\u201d for last year\u2019s election \u201cwas that it was not close; otherwise, the lack of administrative rules and procedures would have resulted in costly litigation and clouded the results.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in response to that statement that Flores said Herrera has \u201cissued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As far as elections and elected officials go, Herrera hasn\u2019t come close to issuing more administrative rules than past secretaries of state In an article I published earlier today, I quoted Secretary of State spokesman James Flores as saying his boss, Mary Herrera, has \u201cissued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.\u201d That […]<\/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-4455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455","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=4455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}