Report from Santa Fe; Stephanie Gonzales

music Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from U.S. West, providing advanced telecommunication services to New Mexico homes and businesses. The members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. The art of communicating science, Los Alamos National Laboratory reaching out and working to make a better New Mexico. I'm Renny Mills. This is report from Santa Fe, our guest today, the Secretary of State for the State of New Mexico, Stephanie Gonzalez. Today it's

going to be real educational TV. I hope so, Renny. Tell you why I wanted you to sit down with us today. I have noticed in recent years that running for office, lobbying, all of these activities have become very complex. We keep passing laws to simplify them. If you remember in a recent legislature, you're through administrative means you worked hard to establish easier ways to vote. It was absentee voting, absentee bouncing, but just voting early. And they seem to work to mess it up. You know, everyone got very excited about it. And then the candidates start sending out, you know, notes say, and here's your application for an absentee ballot. People getting five or six in the mail, it got confusing. But what I'd like to look at today, Stephanie, what it takes officially to run for public office. And while we look at this, I'd like to see if we can't tell the difference between those rules and

regulations that come under the purview of the Secretary of State and laws at the state of New Mexico. And those that are party rules and regulations. So let's assume we take someone who says, I want to run for governor. That's popular posts. Maybe 13 Democrats this time. Now, they have to be citizens of the state of New Mexico. They have to be a citizen, yes. They also have to be affiliated with a particular party, a major party, on the day that the governor's proclamation is issued. And the next proclamation for the 1998 election is going to be on January the 26th. The proclamation comes out. You must be associated with a particular affiliation. You must reside in the in the district which you are seeking in a statewide. You can run from any part of New Mexico. And that applies also to the U.S. representative. Anyone seeking that position, all they need to

do is reside within the state. On the day that the proclamation, the governor's proclamation is issued for the primary election. So that now when we say affiliated with the party, there were three major parties now. We have three major parties, yes. That's right. There's a Democrat, the Republican and the Green Party. Those are the majors. What about the people, the libertarians? Does that count in that affiliation make up all of that? They do count certainly, but not so close to the general election. All right. Now, when we look at some of the rules and regulations, running for office now, and I go back to the days when filing date would come along and we used to have people literally walking the halls of the legislature who would be looking for candidates. You know, if they were a Stephanie Gonzalez running for an office, they liked Lieutenant Governor. Someone else would say we'll find another Stephanie Z Gonzalez and get her to run, you know, against you. You

know, there was all sorts of chicaneery going on. But now we don't have the old wide open primary we used to have. Take us through the steps that we would go through then do we need signatures? Yes. Yes, and actually the candidates begin circulating nominating petitions in October. They can, you know, call the office. They can come by. But that begins October 1st of this year. October 1st, 1997. Yes. I as a possible candidate go up to your office and get the petitions. Yes. And they have up until February the 10th of 1998 to get those petitions and then file these petitions with the office. And this is to take part in the pre-primary convention. You're looking at having together 2% of the number that came out to vote in the last group, notorial. And I've got

some figures here earning. Let me just take a look at the two percent threshold to take part in the pre-primary is 3,915 signatures. And that's just to get them to the pre-primary convention. And usually they will try to get additional signatures that he might even try to get as many as 5,000. Yes, candidates will normally get more, you know, beyond what is necessary. Just in case some of those names are taken off. I do want to mention the amount for the Republican party. And that's 1,863. Unfortunately, we are asking for a ruling from the courts to help us come up with a figure for the green party because there isn't a number that we can go back and say this is how many the green party needs because they didn't become a major party till after that particular election.

So we're going to be asking the courts. We could do it in-house, but I don't want any kind of accusations afterwards. Why did we come up with this figure? Couldn't you have done it this way? So we're playing it safe. So we will have those figures later. And I think it's important, too, that it's one thing to say we want to follow the law, but starting this early. And it's one reason I asked you to do this show today. It is complicated. And I don't think anyone wants to be unfair to any of the parties. Major otherwise you say, no, let's not be unfair. Get the figure they need. And so they know they can go on exactly what they need. And my administration has always done that with whomever we have been fair. So the first step now, I have to go out, I have to get the signatures. Yes. And I have to, by what date again, have a party affiliation. That's in October. The petitions come out this October, but they

need to be in an affiliated party by the time the governor issues the proclamation for the primary election. And that's January the 26th of 98. Right. And affiliation means that means I'm registered. Yes. You have to be registered with one of the major parties. You must reside in that particular district if you're running for district. And so what we do in the office of the Secretary of State, when they come in to file their petitions, the only document that we look at would be the copy of their voter registration. That gives the information we need to count the petitions and decide whether these these candidates do indeed have enough signatures to take part at the pre-primary. I'm sure people will say, and I've heard them say, why didn't she get this

information out? Well, we do. And we have, you know, people come to us after the fact in their election time and say, well, I didn't know about it. Why didn't you, you know, publish it? The fact is, Ernie, that we do publish it. There are laws that and in the statutes that we have to abide by. We also get a lot of cooperation from the League of Women voters. They help us disseminate information. So the word is out there, way in advance. It's a good excuse saying, why didn't you? Exactly. Is that why you can come into our office and say, please, please. It's always so much easier to blame someone else for. Now, looking at the conventions themselves, what part, the pre-primary convention, how much of that comes under the purview of the Secretary of State, how much of it comes under the purview of the Republican, the Democrat, or the Green Party, so on how those are run. All right. Once, once a candidate has

sufficient signatures, they will then proceed and take part at the pre-primary convention. And it is a must. It used to be previously. You can bypass the pre-primary and gather all the signatures you need. The law has changed. It changed in, I believe, in 95. And a candidate must take part in the pre-primary convention. They must get at least 20 percent or more from those elected delegates at the convention to be placed on the ballot. Once that happens, we get certification from all of the political parties telling us who, you know, who is going to be on the ballot. Now, I want to go back just one step. When we do go out for signatures, I have to get signatures of the party that I would be running. Yes. So I'm looking for signatures from Republicans or from Democrats,

but you just don't go out and get anybody signature on the position. They've got to be registered voters. Yes. And it seems like more and more people are paying more attention to those particular petitions. I think the last two elections, there were challenges and there were successful challenges. So candidates need to be aware that the signatures that they gathered must be registered voters in their particular party. You know, there's something else and I think they're always seem to be ways to try to circumvent, you know, the one one reason you would have to get the signatures and the shouting, you know, this meant that just not anyone, it reduced the size of the number of people running, you know, sort of madness for a period. But again, candidates dilute themselves sometime by going out hiring companies to get the signatures. Right. And this, in a sense, if you get a good reputable company, they can get the signatures all right. But again, it sure helps. The candidates who seem to

have the least amount of trouble literally go out themselves. Exactly. And get people to sign them. Having done that being a candidate myself, getting those signatures, it helps you get acquainted with people from around the state. Get to listen to them, you know, what is important to them. And so it benefits the candidate. You know, I must say there's an old story I told a million times and he always laughs the hardest at it. But I always remember, I guess it was Bruce King who had asked someone once, it's ever lucky to sign my petition. And they said, I wouldn't vote for you if you had a last man on earth. And Bruce turned to someone and said, put him down as doubtful. Not quite sure, right? He laughed. He laughed the hardest. I know that. All right, next steps. Now this, this would mean that if we're looking, for example, at, at say 10 out of the, out of the 13 candidates, unpredictable, could be running, say in the Democrat primary. So far, John Dendo, gentle, John tells me

that there is no opposition for the governor, you know, in the Republican primary yet. And I haven't heard anything from the Greens. But if you had 10 candidates running, they're going to need 20%. 20% at the pre-primary. There's no way they're all going to get on that bottom. No, no. Those that do get 20%, the one that receives the highest votes cast will be number one, position number one on the ballot. The person that receives the second will be position number two and so on and so forth. Those that do not receive the 20% will then have 10 days to gather additional signatures. And then bring them back to the office on a particular day with a declaration of candidacy with another 2%. So if we looked at five of those candidates, if you wanted to get five on, each one would have to

have exactly 20%, 20% so you have five that said that you could end up with five. Let's assume we have five candidates out of the 10. Now, once that's done, the declaration of candidacy, and this is interesting because where do they get it? Where do they pick it up? What do they need on it? Because this to me is a real official way of saying I'm running. There are packets that are made up and they can come by our office or the county clerk's office and in the packet, they will receive a calendar of events, the number of signatures that are required, and just general information on being a candidate for public office. This is interesting because then they can. Now, if they get the additional signatures, and again, you're looking at this again as a percentage of votes. So a candidate instead of, you know, just gathering the 2% threshold, they

can automatically go ahead and do the 4% and they're looking at close to 8,000 signatures. And again, a candidate would want to gather more signatures than that. They can't, they still have to take part in the pre-primary. It is a must, they got to go through the pre-primary convention. I cannot say, I don't want to go through and deal with these politicos. I'm on my own. I'm going to ignore it, but I'm going out right away to raise the signatures. I could do that, but I still had to go the other way and show people that I did not have that much support. It used to be that way, where you can bypass it, but no longer. Any other major pitfalls that you could see, when I look at the declaration of candidacy, now I've seen this, and it's always amazing to me. People will say, I didn't officially announce, or I did officially announce, this is really media-older-dash, really. You know, someone says to me, you don't say the

thing about it, but I'm running. It means nothing, really, until what time? Exactly. Until they file in our office, which will be February 10th, we're getting calls now saying, well, who's going to be running for governor? Well, we don't know. You know, the only official candidates that have come out is candidate from Albuquerque and Casey Luna and Gloria Tristani. The others are unofficial and, you know, we really don't know exactly who will file until February 10th. So, even when we say official, the other ones officially announce, not even really. That's right. They went out and they made an announcement. Exactly. And they made it publicly. Exactly. And they could walk in on the file, or just missed the file and they'd say, I changed my mind. I just said, I went to the movie and forgot it. We've had that happen, where they've just forgotten the actual filing and have people wake up the day after

and say, I knew there was something. Exactly. That I wanted to get done. Phone numbers for your office and who specifically, which should they be going through the Bureau of Election in your office to get on the mailing list for information it's going out. Yes. Yes. They can call 1-800-477-3632, or they can dial 827-3600. That's the local number. 827-3660. The toll free number again because this will be seen throughout the state. The toll free number is 1-800-477-3632. Now, there's the problem we always have with campaign financing. This again has become very complex. And how much of this comes through your office, all of it. We have not only the campaign ethics that we look at. When people put out

material that it's supposed to be, you know, it's supposed to be a signature on it, you know, a designate. So you can't just come out with material and pretend you'd input it out. It's supposed to be someone responsible on it. Where do they get that information from? They can, the two numbers that we just read out, same numbers, let them know that what particularly you want to know, whether it's dealing with elections or ethics, and they will connect you with that particular staff member. Can we go back now to the pre-primary convention? Sure. As such. What is the role of the Secretary of State in that convention or is that primarily just up to the parties themselves? And I'm looking not just at the ethics and vote, but for the hand the specifics of it. Well, the parties now have to abide by state law. They must go through the pre-primary convention to become a candidate. If they don't get the 20% from there, then

they can go and get additional signatures. We will then receive from each party a certified list of those people that were that had been elected by their delegation and in which order their names will be on the ballot. If for some reason there are two candidates that receive the same amount of votes, then it is a draw by lot and would determine the position on that. And then we get that information and we make sure that the county clerks get it. And again Ernie, you have to keep in mind that when we get all of this information from all of the parties, we need to put it in a format and then mail it to the county clerks to give them the information. This is a time crunch, of course, that I've seen happen every election. You know, it seems to me they keep stretching out the periods an inordinate amount of time is spent in courts and I can

get the fear. You know, that's what you love not to be sued. Oh, yeah. It comes with the job. It comes with the job. But, you know, you'd rather not. And yet every time they sue, it squeezes at the time between election day and the time that you have. And I sat down with Denise and I used to with Hoyt and sit down and say, you're squeezing yourself, you're almost unmercifully. And I'm trying to get these things out because to get the time to get the ballots printed up to make sure they're accurate as such. Are you able to work within these time constraints now? Yes, there's some some of the dates have been pushed back a little, which with each election cycle, there's something that comes up as you were mentioning. We have to live by those by those deadlines. And yes, staff is busy all year round. You know, not just because it's an off-election year is is this

one. But, you know, there's always an election. Sometimes there's always a deadline. And staff is is incredible. They they come through. I have, we have discussed and at a later broadcast, people are a little unsure now. There'll be an election coming up and will it will be in 1998? Am I correct? Yes. For the public, the new public service regulation? The public regulatory commission along with the corporation commission. That is coming up. So that that also will be kicking off very soon. Yes. The corporation will be demolished as of December 31st of 1998. So therefore, you know, there will be persons seeking election to the new districts. There are five districts. Bernalillo is a district within itself. And there are three other districts that have a little bit of Bernalillo.

Smidgen. Yes. Enough to make it exciting. Yes. A few precincts that will get that were pushed into their particular district. And you have a pretty colored map. Yes, I do. And I wanted to bring it and show it. And, you know, Steve Fesk has who who who designed it and color coded the map did a fine job. But we'll save that for another time. Now, you know, we don't want people. People say it's not my job to come in and give, you know, free political advice as such. But also, I have never known a secretary of state who didn't want to go out and say look, we want to preclude people getting into problems. And from your own experience, you've run, it's an elected office. You've talked to other candidates. We've all watched people that they've turned around and say, I didn't mean for these things to happen. You know, any advice in particular on how to check to make sure they can handle their reporting of the campaign

finances as such. I know you have a calendar that you put on and that. But I'd like to take a couple of minutes now if we can. You can give the kind of advice they should get because this can be very troublesome and it can make life miserable for people seeking office. Well, let me just say that those those out in the viewing audience that are seeking office come by the office. Give us a call. We're there to help them. We mentioned candidates packets in in the packet. There are numerous pamphlets and things to do and things not to do. So all they need to do is pick up the phone, stop by the office and we will help them in any way. There's a because somebody think you can go to jail. Violations can be prosecuted. Yes, they can, Ernie. And no, and I've watched, I've watched people and and again by trying to

fool, you know, follow the rules carefully, they can also protect themselves from like a personal bankruptcy, things of that nature. It's awfully easy to go overboard. And we've seen it recently, especially with lobbyists because we will be doing other shows getting close to the next legislative session. And now people coming to me saying, I just forgot the file, my reports. And they're a big penalties. Yes, yes. We do have a few cases right now that we're waiting for responses on a couple of these lobbyist organizations explaining why they were laid, you know, sending us a good cause letter. And we'll be looking at those. Find a word for today on advice and suggestions for candidates, if you will. Well, I would encourage any person who wants to get involved to seek office. That's the only way that you can really get in the trenches,

change things and make a difference. But you need to do it legally. You need to do it with information that the secretary of state has available. And we will help you decipher all of that information. I've noticed too. I get a feeling that more and more of the political parties, there's a period there where they'd like to work closer together. They don't want to see anyone get hurt either. We did a show a while back and we had a member of the Republican Party here. He was talking to one of the green party members. And he said, he said, I really love organization work. And the green party member said, we're pretty new at this. And he said, well, I'll come down and talk to your people. You're looking at a very shocked member. And I said, for heaven's sake, take them up on it. You have someone with a passion for organization. And plus, he had that passion, you know, that that's uh, uh, uh, Republican Zanetti, Greg Zanetti.

And he said, he was fascinated with me. He said, I'd love to come down and talk to the Greens. You know, if I could help you, you know, and that was rather neat. In fact, at this day, I don't know whether they ever, ever took them up on it, but it was a neat offer. And I find when people, I guess sometimes it, it's like having excess acid acid acid. You don't like to have anyone have it. So if you can help them avoid it, you, you try to, you know, want everyone to be nice and nice and comfortable. Stephanie, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Uh, I hope you'll come back too as we get closer to the, I guess, to the next legislative session. So we can go over very carefully again. What has to be done for those who are lobbying. All right, Ernie. Thank you again. Right. I'm Ernie Mills. Our guest today, Secretary of State, Stephanie Gonzalez. This was, were you talking about educational TV? This was it today. If you're going to run for office, do it. And like we say, do it right. Thank you for being with us, reaching out to all the state in the Mexico over report from Santa Fe.

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from U.S. West, providing advanced telecommunication services to New Mexico homes and businesses. The members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. The art of communicating science, Los Alamos National Laboratory, reaching out and working to make a better New Mexico.