![\"Kasandra](\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Gandara-Kasandra1-336x245.jpg\")
<\/a>Courtesy photo<\/p>
Kasandra Gandara<\/p><\/div>\n
State law<\/a> doesn’t let government employees use public resources\u00a0to\u00a0campaign. Gandara knows the text wasn’t appropriate.<\/p>\n “I wish I could take it back, because it was never my intent to spend taxpayer dollars on that,” she\u00a0told NMPolitics.net.<\/p>\n Gandara manages nine offices in southern New Mexico for the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD). She’s currently on leave from her job while she campaigns for the open District 1 City Council seat, so she no longer has the CYFD cell phone.<\/p>\n But Gandara was setting up her campaign and gathering voters’ signatures to qualify for the ballot before she took a leave of absence.\u00a0Anna Juarez, who lives in the district Gandara is seeking to represent, was helping the campaign gather signatures before filing day<\/a> in late September.<\/p>\n That’s when Gandara sent the text message to a non-governmental phone belonging to\u00a0Sally Carter, her campaign treasurer. Carter is also CYFD’s financial coordinator in Las Cruces.<\/p>\n “Angelica is going to deliver the petition to Anna Juarez,”\u00a0the text<\/a>\u00a0states. It’s referring to Angelica Rubio, Gandara’s campaign manager.<\/p>\n Gandara told NMPolitics.net\u00a0she and Carter were having a work-related conversation about buying\u00a0plane tickets for a CYFD staffer and client. Gandara was on the road, juggling phone conversations and driving, and at one point had to pull over to send an email related to the tickets.<\/p>\n Gandara\u00a0said she was having problems with her personal phone, which was in and out of service on the drive. In the middle of all of\u00a0that, she sent the campaign text from her government phone.<\/p>\n “It was just an afterthought,” Gandara\u00a0said. “I just didn’t even think about it, honestly.”<\/p>\n Gandara said that’s the only campaign-related text she sent using her CYFD phone. A review of texts CYFD provided in response to a records request didn’t turn up others that are\u00a0obviously campaign-related.\u00a0Gandara said she had no campaign-related conversations using that\u00a0phone.<\/p>\n CYFD\u00a0is investigating.<\/p>\n “State policy is very clear: Employees are not allowed to use their state-issued equipment for political purposes,” agency spokesman Henry Varela said. “Any violation of this policy is unacceptable.”<\/p>\n While Gandara’s text was inappropriate, it isn’t the most egregious example of\u00a0someone\u00a0using government resources to campaign. Several officials have been scrutinized in recent years for appearing in pricey\u00a0government-funded<\/a> TV ads<\/a> while candidates for office. And then-Lt. Gov. Diane Denish’s gubernatorial campaign reimbursed the Lieutenant Governor’s Office for almost $800 spent on political news releases<\/a>\u00a0in 2009.<\/p>\n A text message has value. But CYFD phone plans come with unlimited texts, so Gandara’s political message\u00a0didn’t cost taxpayers additional money.<\/p>\n “I think this is a little bit different than the Denish situation because it seems like in this instance no public money was spent,” said Viki Harrison, executive director of the good-government group Common Cause New Mexico.<\/p>\n “Of course there shouldn’t be any private messages on a work cell phone, but I can’t imagine there is anybody in state government who hasn’t used their work phone to make a personal call or send a personal text once or twice,” Harrison\u00a0added.<\/p>\n Gandara’s text messages became an issue after political operative Jeffrey Isbell obtained copies\u00a0through a records request to\u00a0CYFD. The\u00a0anonymously run Facebook page Close the Cafe, which is focused\u00a0on Las Cruces-area politics and ideologically aligned with Isbell, posted on Oct. 17<\/a> that a complaint would be filed with the Office of the State Auditor on Oct. 19.<\/p>\n A week later, Sunalei Stewart, chief of staff in the auditor’s office, said Monday that no one has filed a complaint. Isbell declined to comment for this article.<\/p>\n Gandara faces Eli Guzman in the\u00a0Nov. 3 election<\/a>. Steve Calderazzo’s name is also\u00a0on the ballot. Calderazzo\u00a0tried to drop out after the deadline had passed<\/a>. He could also win, though it’s not likely since he’s not campaigning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before taking a leave of absence from her state job and giving up her government-issued phone, Kasandra Gandara sent a text from the phone related to her city council campaign. “I wish I could take it back,” Gandara says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[145,214,107],"class_list":["post-94505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-las-cruces","tag-las-cruces-election","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94505","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=94505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}