New Mexico

no info 3/18

see rio grande stinktank gessing

going blue? demography?

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AN 2 26

Solomon Peña, a New Mexico GOP candidate who lost a November election, was arrested as a key suspect in a series of drive-by shootings that specifically targeted Democratic lawmakers’ homes, The Associated Press reports.

Peña suggested that the election was “rigged” after he lost to incumbent state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia by approximately 3,600 votes.

NBC reported in November that many “Republicans fear democracy is in peril because they believe that elections are rigged against them” and that former president Donald Trump’s false claim of voter fraud have encouraged his supporters to “use force or intimidation” — hence the Jan. 6 insurrection. Peña has confirmed in a tweet that he was in Washington, D.C. on the day of the attack.

Later that month, Peña also tweeted a photo of himself wearing a "Make America Great Again" sweatshirt, with the caption "Trump just announced for 2024. I stand with him. I never conceded my HD 14 race. Now researching my options." Around the same time, the 39-year-old Albuquerque resident took it upon himself to show up at the homes of elected officials uninvited, in an attempt to prove that he won the election. Not too long after that, the shootings began on December 4.

Harold Medina, Albuquerque Police Chief called Peña a “mastermind” of a “politically motivated conspiracy” that resulted in the shootings, which occurred at the homes of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboas, New Mexico Rep. Javier Martinez, Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Mally — whose home received “more than a dozen rounds” of bullets — and lastly, New Mexico Senator Linda Lopez, who confirmed that three bullets grazed her 10-year-old daughter’s room.

Peña, although the key suspect, is not the only one. The “failed Republican candidate” paid four other men cash to execute the shootings using stolen cars, although he, himself, did “pull the trigger” in one of the shootings.

A few hours after investigators detected gunfire rippling through Sen. Lopez’s neighborhood, an officer discovered bullet casings in a car driven by Jose Trujillo and registered under Peña’s name. The car contained over 800 fentanyl pills and two firearms.

The New Mexico GOP responded to Peña’s arrest in a statement, saying, “If Peña is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

More arrests and charges are on the horizon, according to police, and the investigation remains ongoing.

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an 12 24

Water stayed at the forefront of news about conservation, health and money in New Mexico this year, and pressure is growing for increased support from the Roundhouse in the January legislative session.

As the world keeps heating up due to human burning and extraction of fossil fuels, New Mexico faces the dual anxiety of too much water at times, and too little at others.

While unprecedented levels of federal money was made available for water projects during the Biden administration – from drought projects to drinking water concerns — advocacy groups say costs for addressing long-neglected contamination issues across the nation are “grossly underestimated.”

Flash floods poised to continue in disaster areas through monsoon season

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Source New Mexico covered nearly 100 stories about water in 2024, ranging from U.S. Supreme Court casesto introducing the state’s new water czar to deadly flooding following wildfires and storms.

Here’s some stories you might have missed, and a look forward at what’s coming around the bend.

Rivers and streams

The relationship between chronic drought and deadly, devastating floods remains, as fires consumed forest and homes around Ruidoso, followed by walls of water and mud sloughing off the mountains during monsoon season.

Burn scars around the state faced flooding this summer, washing out homes and flooding houses, but also spaces like schooling.

Student enrollment in Ruidoso school district remains steady despite post-wildfire flood danger

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Climate disaster continued into election season, closing polling sites, after flooding swept through Chaves County, killing two people and devastating areas around the river.

While winter weather early with heavy wet snow downing power lines and raising flood concerns in the aftermelt, New Mexico remains in drought, with loaded dice for a drier, warmer wintercoming.

Wildlife advocates reached a deal with the federal government over the to end a lawsuit over the tiny, silvery minnow, but humans and continued habitat loss from a drying Rio Grande continue to imperil its survival.

Feds, irrigation district say keep your wheels off of the silvery minnow

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The New Mexico attorney general escalated stream access lawsuits, asking judges to penalize landowners fencing off streams along the Pecos basin for not acting sooner. A judge still hasn’t ruled on that case.

The federal picture

Many of the effects on New Mexico’s waters stemmed from Washington.

The nation’s highest court struck a blow to Texas, New Mexico and Colorado’s proposed plan to end a decade-long, costly lawsuit over Rio Grande water. Instead, the court sided with the federal government and ordered the case to continue. The high court appointed a new special master, who heard from the parties and sent them back to the negotiating table. If no agreement is reached, the plan is to head back to trial.

That’s not all. New Mexico agency and water conservationists remained concerned from the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA. The decision removed pollution protections for many intermittent waters – and endangered an estimated 93% of New Mexico streams and wetlands. The decision drove further protections of 250 miles of streams.

Congress has yet to act on $3.7 billion in a historic bid to settle lawsuits and manage tribal water rights in New Mexico, despite calls from the New Mexico delegation for leadership to act.

New Mexico received a federal grant to examine how “forever chemicals” have affected drinking water systems across the state, even as it starts blood testing residents around areas with impacted groundwater.

Water is for drinking, too

It’s been nearly a year since state officials released findings that Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, which provides drinking water for more than 19,000 residents in Sunland Park and Santa Teresa, had been sending them water with “high levels of arsenic.” It also had multiple safety deficiencies. In a media release on Dec. 16, the utility said it has addressed nearly all of state inspectors’ concerns from last year, and has had three quarters without an arsenic violation according to state tests.

In November, attorneys filed a lawsuitagainst the utility company and the local government entities that run it, alleging their actions violated residents’ civil rights. Earlier this year the utility got both a new director and a new board, but only after a delay resulting in a blame game between officials after a failure to file documents with the state.

The troubles at the utility sparked state officials to take a closer look at drinking water systems across the state and may result in future fines for dozens of utilities that provided no answer or insufficient plans to address issues.

Scientist says there’s legacy plutonium contamination in Los Alamos

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Money and water

One thread Source NM will follow in 2025 is how New Mexico spends its money when it comes to its most precious resource.

While oil and gas revenues have kept money flowing for the state government’s operations, water conservation nonprofits and the executive branch are asking state lawmakers to turn the tap on in 2025 for water investment.

The state has asked a judge to award money and compel the military to clean up “forever chemicals” which have contaminated water beneath bases in the state.

Las Vegas finally received its first installment of federal funding to fix its water systems after they were damaged during the 2022 wildfire season.

Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com.

===

sep 2024

14 fake electors from 2020 are Donald Trump electors again in 2024

Fourteen so-called fake electors who participated in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to throw the election results into chaos will once again serve as electors for Trump in 2024, including several who currently face criminal charges.

With input from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have renominated 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 election. Wisconsin's electors aren't publicly available until the first week of October, according to state election officials. A legal settlement bars unauthorized Wisconsin 2020 electors from serving as electors for Trump again.

There are no repeat electors from 2020 on this year’s Republican slates for Arizona and Georgia, the other two states where fake electors signed certificates incorrectly declaring Trump the winner.

The 14 former fake electors who are serving again include the Nevada Republican Party chairman, the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania and several current or former county chairs.

usatoday

"Politically or in terms of the health of our democracy, the idea that people who potentially committed a crime in trying to further a scheme to subvert the results of the 2020 election... the idea that they are in any way involved in politics is troubling," Director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law Rick Hasen said.

While some may have acted with the belief that they were just a back up if there was a legal change to the outcome, Hasen noted, "some of them, there have at least been allegations that they knew what they were doing and they knowingly engaged in criminal conduct."

None of the 14 repeat electors responded to USA TODAY's attempts to contact them.

The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump is facing four felony charges in Washington, D.C. related to leading conspiracies to reverse the 2020 results and disenfranchise millions of voters. He has refused to commit to unconditionally accepting the results of the upcoming 2024 election, and while he has sometimes acknowledged that he lost the 2020 race, he has also continued to falsely tell supporters that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Pending charges

Charges have been brought against the fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, as well as some people working with Trump.

Some of the cases are moving very slowly. In August, a Maricopa County judge set a tentative trial date of Jan. 5, 2026, for Arizona's fake electors case. The state GOP did not renominate any of the 2020 electors. In Nevada, the state has appealed to the state supreme court a lower court decision to reject the fake electors case stating it had been filed in the wrong county.

More:‘Somewhat dicey' and ‘problematic’: Inside Trump's bid to have fake electors overturn 2020 election

Still, electors might think twice about being party to signing such certificates again, Hasen said.

"Anyone who's an elector who's asked to do something shady this time, might think, hmm, last time around, these people were indicted, so maybe I shouldn't do that," Hasen said.

Michigan

The Michigan Republican Party has renominated the most fake electors. Six names that appeared on a certificate falsely claiming that Trump had won the state are on the 2024 list of 15 electors provided by the Michigan Secretary of State's office: Amy Facchinello, John Haggard, Timothy King, Marian Sheridan, Hank Choate and Meshawn Maddock–a former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Trump lost Michigan in 2020 by about 154,000 votes.

All six of them face criminal charges. The trial has not yet been scheduled but isn't expected to begin this year.

Choate's attorney, David Kallman, said the pending 2020 charges shouldn't affect who is picked to be a 2024 elector. Choate has pleaded not guilty.

"This was another election year. This really has nothing to do with the last 2020, election," he said. "I don't think it really impacts the criminal case at all."

Kallman said that Choate didn't know he was doing anything wrong in 2020. He said Trump's attorney's told the electors that the certificate would only be used if Trump's campaign won a court case overturning the results of the election in Michigan or if the state legislature stepped in.

"My client was told by people he trusted, attorneys at this meeting, that this wasn't going to be used unless one of those things happened," Kallman said.

He said electors were only presented with the page to sign their names, not the page that falsely claimed that they voted in the Capitol building and that Trump won.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Republicans submitted a list of presidential electors to the secretary of state’s office with five former fake electors: Bill Bachenberg, Bernadette Comfort, Ash Khare, Pat Poprik and Andy Reilly. The state has 19 electoral votes. Trump lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes.

Reilly, an attorney, is also the Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania electors wouldn't sign the fake certificate in 2020 unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. Therefore, electors have not been charged with a crime.

Khare, who has been an elector since 1990, told USA TODAY in April that he advocated to include that clause.

"We wanted to make sure that we’re not doing anything illegal," he said.

Nevada

The Nevada Republican Party renominated Michael McDonald, the chair of the state party, and Jesse Law, chairman of the Republican party of Clark County, both of whom signed the 2020 certificate although Trump lost the state by 154,000 votes. The state has six electoral votes.

McDonald, a longtime friend of Trump's who is senior adviser to the 2024 Trump campaign, and Law were among the electors indicted in Nevada. The case, which was dismissed over questions of whether it was filed in the correct county, has been appealed by Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, to the state Supreme Court.

Trump lost Nevada by more than 30,000 votes.

New Mexico

The New Mexico Republican Party renominated Deborah Weh Maestas, the former state party chair. The state has five electoral votes. It's role in the scheme was always considered an outlier. New Mexico is not a swing state and has supported Democrats in every presidential election since 2008. Trump lost there in 2020 but about 100,000 votes.

Like in Pennsylvania, the 2020 New Mexico electors wouldn't sign unless the forms specifically said that their votes weren't to be counted until the courts ruled in Trump's favor. New Mexico electors have not been charged with a crime.

More:Wisconsin is the last state that may prosecute Trump’s fake electors, but AG Josh Kaul is mum

A key legal change since 2020

Electors normally draw little to no attention. In a presidential election year, each party nominates state electors who will vote for their presidential nominee in the Electoral College if their candidate wins. Party leaders such as the county party chairs or local elected officials are normally selected. Their names must be submitted to the state before the election and made publicly available.

But in 2020 GOP officials in seven states that President Joe Biden won sent fake electoral certificates to Congress stating that former President Donald Trump had actually won. The certificates were an effort to baselessly convince lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence that there were substantial questions about the outcome of the election in swing states.

The House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and Trump's efforts to stay in power after losing the election found that the fake electoral certificates were part of a coordinated effort by Trump's allies to block Congress from certifying the election results. They wanted Congress to return th

Pence refused to accept, or even consider, the "alternate" electoral slates.

Jonathan Diaz, Director of Voting Advocacy for advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said it is unlikely that scheme would be successful again. In 2022, Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act, which changed the rules so Congress can only count electoral certificates signed by the governor of the state or another official approved by state law when the House and Senate meet to count the votes on Jan. 6. It also raised the threshold for members of Congress to object to counting a state from one representative and one senator to one-fifth of each chamber. Also, in 2023 the Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Harper that state legislatures have little power to overturn election results.

"It's really going to be much, much more difficult for a slate of fake electors to try the same kind of shenanigans that they did in 2020," Diaz said. "The [2022 law] was really targeted at plugging the holes that existed in the previous process, because the law was so old, and really making sure that the kind of effort that we saw focused on that joint session of Congress can't occur again."

*USA TODAY reporter Erin Mansfield contributed to this article

===

otero cty 1/6 convict feelings intuition?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/new-mexico-republican-election-sabotage/

SoS nom trujillo?

got nom tho 19 prev felonies?!

Solomon Peña, a New Mexico GOP candidate who lost a November election, was arrestedas a key suspect in a series of drive-by shootings that specifically targeted Democratic lawmakers’ homes, The Associated Press reports.

Peña suggested that the election was “rigged” after he lost to incumbent state Rep. Miguel P. Garcia by approximately 3,600 votes.

Peña, although the key suspect, is not the only one. The “failed Republican candidate” paid four other men cash to execute the shootings using stolen cars, although he, himself, did “pull the trigger” in one of the shootings.

A few hours after investigators detected gunfire rippling through Sen. Lopez’s neighborhood, an officer discovered bullet casings in a car driven by Jose Trujillo and registered under Peña’s name. The car contained over 800 fentanyl pills and two firearms.

The New Mexico GOP responded to Peña’s arrest in a statement, saying, “If Peña is found guilty, he must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

More arrests and charges are on the horizon, according to police, and the investigation remains ongoing.

New Koch

Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity opens shop again in NM

By Matt Grubs

June 12, 2017

In the world of liberal and progressive politics, there have been perhaps no more effective boogeymen than Charles and David Koch. The billionaire Kansas businessmen have played an outsized role in conservative politics in the new millennium.

After at least a four-year hiatus, the Koch brothers-founded nonprofit Americans for Prosperity is back in New Mexico and prepared to spend during the upcoming election cycle.

"Broadly speaking, we advocate for the framework for a free society," says AFP state director Robert "Burly" Cain. "I have seen time and again how devastating the government can be when it's used in the wrong way."

Cain is a native New Mexican and has recently worked on the presidential campaign of Libertarian and former governor Gary Johnson.

He tells SFR the state has failed to lift up the public education system, hold down heath care costs in check and ease the burden on entrepreneurs. "It's a really challenging environment for people to start businesses here. And it's getting harder," Cain says.

While the Kochs have publicly distanced themselves from AFP in recent years, the nonprofit isn't required to disclose its donors, so the extent of their financial support is unknown. As an IRS-designated 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the group has to spend the majority of its money on "social welfare" issues and education. That can include lobbying and political advertising, as long as AFP doesn't endorse or oppose a specific candidate and doesn't spend the majority of its money on political activities.

Cain started with AFP on May 1 and says he'll open an Albuquerque office soon, with plans to identify locations for satellite offices in the near future. Santa Fe is in the running, he says. AFP plans an advocacy training session, something it calls the Grassroots Leadership Academy, next month, as well as the start of a speakers' series in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces. He hasn't announced the speakers.

Democratic Party of New Mexico Chair Richard Ellenberg isn't likely to attend, calling AFP's positions "extreme" and targeted to benefit millionaires and billionaires.

"Americans for Prosperity forces their ideology without recognizing the culture and the needs of our state. We cannot allow two billionaires to buy political influence in our state," he tells SFR in a statement.

"There are those who want to make some of our donors out to be bad people because they've been successful," Cain says of the opposition he knows is out there. "They're wonderful people. The organization itself has done incredible things around the country.

"I think anyone who wants to take a minute to talk to me will learn that whether it's criminal justice reform, tax reform, good government … I think they'll see there's a lot of work we do that they'll appreciate."

Paul Gessing, of the libertarian-oriented think tank the Rio Grande Foundation, partnered recently with AFP to oppose a gas tax increase in Albuquerque to pay for maintenance and improvement of Duke City roads.

"To the extent that we're in alignment, we'll work with them," Gessing tells SFR over the phone. He points out that the Rio Grande Foundation takes more of a policy approach to its activities than a political approach, but says it's not uncommon for AFP's political stance to line up with the foundation's policy statements.

Equally, if not more, important than having political camaraderie is having money to back it up.

"We welcome them back to a liberal-leaning state," Gessing says. "There's just not a lot of political money here, but it seems to me that it's an unbalanced ledger."

If there's one thing AFP knows how to do, it's spend money.

Santa Fe Reporter

https://abq.news/2021/08/court-upholds-santa-fe-regulations-on-campaign-disclosure/

Federal Court Rejects Conservative Rio Grande Foundation ...https://abq.news › Recent Posts

Aug 4, 2021 — Foundation President Paul Gessing struck a defiant tone on the ruling, vowing to seek a rehearing. “The decision was made due to a supposed lack ...

wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Grande_Foundation

Rio Grande Foundation is an economic policy think tank in Albuquerque, New Mexico affiliated with the U.S. nationwide State Policy Network. It was founded in 2000 by Hal Stratton, a former state representative and Attorney General of New Mexico, and Harry Messenheimer, an economist then at George Mason University. Paul Gessing became president in 2006.^[2]

The group is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.

The Foundation maintains a website and a blog called Errors of Enchantment, and regularly contributes opinion pieces to local newspapers, as well as publishing reports on state economic policy. The Foundation's president, Paul Gessing, has been featured on local talk shows and radio programs to discuss economic issues....

precursor wd win but looked at margin vs 2020 30 pts?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/republicans-blame-partys-election-fraud-lies-for-lack-of-voter-turnout-for-new-mexico-special-election/

Batsh*t’: Trump’s long shot bid to win New Mexico has political leaders baffled

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

https://www.carolinajournal.com/news-article/should-a-light-shine-on-donors-to-nonprofits/

aug 2017 kari travis (libtard?)

paul Gessing wanted to pop the top on the soda tax in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That was all.

The president of the libertarian Rio Grande Foundation never planned to file a lawsuit against the city. But when Santa Fe elected officials accused him of violating a campaign finance ordinance and demanded to see his donor list, he thought he had no choice.

Rio Grande’s problem is nothing new. In fact, the John Locke Foundation and dozens of other nonprofits have faced and continue to face similar scrutiny from people and organizations opposing the nonprofits’ mission.

Under federal law, organizations classified as 501(c)3 aren’t allowed to engage in political or campaign advocacy, while 501(c)4 entities may participate in lobbying and political campaigning — provided the majority of their work is focused on public policy and issue advocacy.

Although 501(c)3 nonprofits are prohibited from endorsing or opposing any candidate running for elected office, for decades they’ve been subject to much scrutiny under federal and local campaign finance laws.

The trouble for Rio Grande began in March, when Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales proposed a two-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages including soda, energy drinks, sports drinks, juice boxes, and even sweetened coffee. The revenue would fund a Pre-K program for the city, Gessing told Carolina Journal.

The tax was bad news, RGF policy analysts said. Beverage prices would explode. The cost of a soda 12-pack would nearly double. Low-income families would suffer.

On April 6, RGF released a website and videovoicing their concerns. The goal was to tell voters what would happen if they green-lighted the plan.

The same day RGF released the video, Gessing got a letter from the city’s attorneys.

“They said, ‘If you go ahead with this, you’re going to have to disclose your donors.’ And that’s when I kind of freaked out a little bit.”

RGF had done nothing illegal by IRS 501(c)3 nonprofit standards, Guessing said. They weren’t campaigning on behalf of a candidate. They weren’t engaged in inappropriate advocacy.

“It was news to me. I was running around with my hair on fire for the next few days trying to figure out what to do going forward, because it was totally unexpected.”

RGF violated a city law, passed in 2015, that forces nonprofits to disclose donor information if they campaign around ballot initiatives, city attorneys said.

Gessing appeared before the city ethics board, where he was forced to disclose the nonprofit that produced the website and video, as well as the name of the donor who funded the project.

RGF decided to keep the website up but canceled plans for expensive postcard and social media campaigns.

Shortly after, Matt Miller, an attorney from the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, called Guessing.

Santa Fe’s law was unconstitutional, Miller said.

“I told [Gessing] that we could challenge this law in federal court and have a good probability of winning.”

A lawsuit was filed.

The controversy surrounding nonprofit disclosure laws

Arguments over nonprofits and donor privacy date back to 1956, when Alabama tried to force the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to turn over its bank records and donor information.

Alabama repeatedly claimed the NAACP was breaking a state law requiring foreign corporations to qualify before doing business in the state.

The nonprofit, based in New York, believed it was exempt from the law. Turning over its donor information would be dangerous to supporters and would deter future contributions, NAACP leaders said.

A two-year legal battle ensued, until, in 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NAACP, saying that Alabama’s demand violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 2010, Citizens United, a conservative 501(c)4, challenged the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, a 2002 law preventing corporations or union-funded political ads from airing within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. The law also required “electioneering communications” to display the name and address of the person or group that funded the ad.

The organization was blocked from airing a documentary about Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2008 presidential primary. Though the film was critical of Clinton, it did not explicitly tell voters to vote against her.

The Supreme Court voted, 5-4, in favor of Citizens United, ruling that government shouldn’t restrict speech for some corporations while exempting other corporations with media affiliations. The court did, however, maintain the BCRA’s donor disclosure requirement.

In 2014, Delaware Strong Families, a 501(c)3 religious nonprofit, planned to distribute a voter guide based on issues of interest. The practice is a common way for organizations to inform voters about where candidates stand on social and economic issues.

Under Delaware law, DSF was required to report the names, addresses, and contribution amounts of its donors, because the voter guide qualified as an electioneering communication. Not only was the state interested in who paid for the voter guide, it also wanted to see the names of any donor who contributed more than $100 to the nonprofit during the election period.

Broadening the ‘media exemption’ to include nonprofits

Both 501(c)3s and 501(c)4s are treated unfairly under campaign finance laws, a recent study on nonprofit privacy shows.

The primary jobs of public policy organizations are analyzing legislation and informing the public of potential outcomes, said Jon Riches, director of national litigation and general counsel for the Goldwater Institute.

Such work is similar to that done by news outlets, but, unlike media organizations, 5o1(c)3s and 501(c)4s don’t receive the exemptions under campaign finance laws.

That’s a double standard, Riches told CJ.

Media organizations write opinions, endorse candidates, and accept money to print campaign ads. All of these activities could be classified as campaign and “electioneering communications.” Yet, to protect First Amendment rights, newspapers and networks aren’t held to account in the same way as nonprofits.

For example, the Gannett-owned Delaware News Journalexercises tremendous influence over public policy and political races. In the 2016 election, the paper endorsed candidates for governor, Congress, New Castle County executive, and Wilmington mayor.

But unlike DSF, which was scrutinized for its “electioneering communication,” the Journal was exempt from Delaware’s campaign finance laws.

Media exemptions protect First Amendment rights, but the criteria for those privileges are outdated, Riches said. Many modern news sources are owned by privately funded nonprofits. Additionally, the public turns to think tanks and public policy nonprofits to gather information, just as they would turn to a news network.

A paradox results.

“A small nonprofit organization is subject to often onerous regulations whenever it speaks about policymakers or supports candidates and issues in the run-up to an election — while giant companies like Comcast, CNN, or Fox [News] can make movies, publish reports, and write editorials supporting or opposing those very same issues and candidates without facing any such restrictions whatsoever,” Riches writes in An Informed Citizenry: Broadening the “Media Exemption” to Include Nonprofit Communications.

No principled reason exists to treat public policy nonprofits differently than news organizations, especially since the purpose of the press exemption is preserving the collection and dissemination of information, he said.

That value doesn’t depend on the identity or corporate structure of the outlet.

“Some have argued that the institutional press should receive special constitutional protection not afforded to other corporations or associations because the institutional press is somehow unique,” Riches said. “These arguments are dangerously elitist.”

Campaign finance laws enforce transparency and sometimes do, indeed, apply to news networks, countered Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina.

Filing as a 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 doesn’t qualify an organization for a press exemption, Phillips said. Donor disclosures and other privacy regulations are determined by a nonprofit’s activities. For example, if a 501(c)4 campaigns on behalf of a candidate, it should disclose its donors.

Such laws exist to protect the public from corruption, Phillips said.

“The U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts throughout the nation have made clear that disclosure laws are a minimal burden on First Amendment activity and that they serve the very important public interest in maintaining a well-informed electorate,” he told CJ.

Courts should continue to apply a balancing test to Constitutional challenges, as in the Citizens United case, Phillips added.

But any law not “strictly tailored to campaign finance needs” is concerning, said Susanna Birdsong, policy counsel for the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“As ever we will oppose and challenge campaign finance reform laws that we believe are unconstitutionally overbroad,” Birdsong said.

What’s next for the Rio Grande Foundation

There’s a good chance RGF will win the lawsuit against Santa Fe, Miller said. On Aug. 24, the city filed an answer to the case, denying the foundation’s conclusion that requiring donor disclosure burdens a person’s right to free speech.

“The Rio Grande Foundation has alleged no facts that indicate that disclosure of its contributors’ names will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either government officials or private parties,” wrote Santa Fe attorney Kelly Brennan.

The case is on hold for several months while lawyers on both sides build their defense. No major developments are likely before the beginning of 2018, Miller said.

For now, Gessing and his staff are stuck waiting.

“The idea of donor privacy is being totally undermined here,” Gessing told CJ.

If foundation contributors sense a threat to their privacy, they will be far less likely to support RGF — or any other nonprofit. That’s a threat to free speech.

It’s one thing to have campaign or candidate oriented finance laws. It’s another to have ballot measure regulations, Gessing said.

“You can always argue that there’s a quid pro quo with the candidate, whereas the ballot measure, pass or no pass, isn’t going to give us anything on the backside of the issue. We are purely involved in the ballot measure … because of principle.”

Perception is half the battle for conservative think tanks such as RGF, which are often branded as mouthpieces for the Koch brothers.

This can sometimes evoke hostility from Left-leaning politicians.

Mayor Javier Gonzales, a Democrat, doesn’t necessarily have a vendetta against RGF, but the organization’s libertarian label hasn’t helped the situation, Gessing said.

“I think [city officials] were probably more gleeful in their enforcement than they would have been otherwise.”

The Constitution is clear on the issue, Miller said. Governments can’t silence nonprofits by threatening the privacy of their donors.

It is up to individuals to decide whether an organization is honest, he said.

“Groups may choose to make themselves very transparent to gain legitimacy. And it’s totally legitimate for listeners and voters to prefer messages from people who are totally transparent.”

And, apparently, Santa Fe residents listened to RGF’s video and website. In May, the proposed soda tax fell flat among voters.

Gessing only hopes his organization can continue to work as it should.

“We’ve been active and involved and taken positions on soda taxes before. It’s not like we just rolled out of bed one day and saw this tax and got … a big check from the soda industry and said, ‘OK, now we’ve got to do this.’”

“This is the core of what we do.”

categories: Business and Regulations, CJ Exclusives, Law & Regulation, North Carolina

tags: campaign finance, First Amendment, goldwater institute, NAACP, rio grande foundation

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/07/09/governors-afpm-koch-oil-trump-clean-car-rollbacks

many lnx docs

Bipartisan Group of Governors Pushes Back on Big Oil, Tells Trump Admin to Halt Clean Car Rollbacks

By Ben Jervey • Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - 14:18

As the Trump administration scrambles to formalize its rollback of clean car standards, 24 governors are telling the President to pump the brakes on the proposed rule. The governors have signed a letter, as reported this morning in The New York Times, Associated Press, and Bloomberg, requesting that the administration reconsider the rollback of fuel efficiency and emissions standards, and to honor California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to write its own standards, which other states are allowed under the law to sign onto.

As New York Times reporter Hiroko Tabuchi explains, “According to the draft statement, its 24 signatories represent 52 percent of the United States population and include two Republican governors — Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Phil Scott of Vermont— as well as the governors of four states that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

The governors join the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers — which warned that the proposed rules would create “untenable” instability for the industry — in asking that the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halt the proposed rollback. The letter also presents a counterpoint to an earlier letter sent by a handful of Republican governors, which was coordinated and drafted by a powerful oil industry trade group.

A Counterpoint to Oil Industry Influence

The oil industry’s influence on this rulemaking process has been well documented, and Senator Tom Carper and Representative Frank Pallone, Jr. recently launched an investigation to determine the scope of this influence and whether lobbying efforts by the oil industry violated the laws that govern agency rulemaking. In December 2018, a bombshell investigation by The New York Times revealed a “covert social media and lobbying campaign” that was launched a year ago by groups tied to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a trade organization representing oil refiners and gasoline marketers, with close ties to Koch Industries and Koch-funded advocacy groups.

The New York Times report explained howMarathon Petroleum, the nation's largest oil refiner, worked with AFPM and other Koch affiliates to circulate letters to Congress and agencies to lay out arguments for a more extreme rollback of the standards than even the automotive industry was seeking.

The Times also revealed how AFPM created a front group called Energy4US, deploying Facebook advertisements to prompt thousands of identical public comments filed in the Federal Register supporting the proposed rule. Researchers at DeSmog's KochvsClean project connected the front group to more than one-quarter of all public comments that the DOT had received on the proposed rule, while also revealing that the oil industry-funded PR group Consumer Energy Alliance was connected to the campaign.

Emails obtained by the investigative watchdog group Documented revealed that AFPM was actively recruiting Republican governors to sign onto a public comment letter supporting the weaker CAFE (corporate average fuel efficiency) standards, while also “shopping around” a pre-written op-ed with language borrowed from the American Energy Alliance, a free market advocacy group run by a former Koch Industries lobbyist.

The emails from Documented clearly reveal that AFPM drafted the letter that would eventually be signed by the Republican governors, and that the group sought support while circulating it around state offices.

“AFPM and it’s member companies, which include ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Chevron and Marathon Petroleum, have a vested interest in keeping gas guzzling vehicles on the road,” said Jamie Corey, a Senior Researcher at Documented, who uncovered the emails. “The public should know who’s pulling the strings behind-the-scenes when these Republican Governors come out in support of Trump’s plan to rollback fuel standards.”

AFPM deployed the corporate-backed Republican Governors Association (RGA) and their policy arm, the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee (RGPPC) to help circulate the letter. AFPM contributed more than $200,000 to RGA during the 2018 election cycle, according to IRS filings.

“Brian Sanderson, the Policy Director with the RGA, has been circulating the letter as well as informational materials to Governors across the country for review. I wanted to reach out to offer to answer any questions and ask for Governor Martinez to consider joining the attached letter,” AFPM’s manager of state and local outreach Peter Barnes wrote in an email to Keith Gardner, chief of staff to New Mexico Governor Martinez. Barnes wrote an identical message asking for support from Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and others.

AFPM email to the office of Gov. Keith Gardner

Eventually, governors from Texas, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Oklahoma co-signed the letter, which was sent to the DOT and EPA on October 26, 2018, and subsequently added to the official rulemaking records.

More 'Public' Comments From Another Koch Group

In addition to the thousands of comments that the DOT received from AFPM’s secretive Energy4US front group, recent reporting by The New York Times identified another trove of bundled comments from an additional Koch-tied group.

Through online petitions, American Commitment, a Koch-funded and controlled advocacy organization, “generated almost 1,600 public comments in support of the rollback, or 13 percent of the 12,000 comments received and posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” according to The Times' Tabuchi.

American Commitment is run by Phil Kerpen, who has worked for a number of key organizations in the Koch network, including the Free Enterprise Fund, the Club for Growth, the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Kerpen has recently published a handful of op-eds attacking the electric vehicle tax credit, and was one of the signatories of a 2018 letter to the Trump administration that argued for the revocation of California’s Clean Air Act waiver that allows it to set its own air quality standards. The letter, which foretold the administration’s current position in its negotiations with California, was signed by eleven groups, eight of which have clear ties to the Koch network.

The recent Times report also noted the influence of Koch-tied climate denialists during the rule revision process, showing how they pressured the administration to seek a more dramatic rollback of the standards than even the car companies were seeking.

Scott Pruitt and Myron Ebell

[pix At an April 3, 2018 announcement that the EPA would rewrite fuel efficiency standards, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt shook hands with Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), right, and spoke with Mitch Bainwol of the Auto Alliance and John Bozella of the Global Automakers trade group. Credit: C-SPAN]

“The automakers are not going to help and may be part of the opposition,” wrote Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who also served on the EPA transition team after President Trump's election, in a May 2018 email sent to members of the Cooler Heads Coalition and an official at the EPA. In the emails, acquired by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request, Ebell argued to his former EPA colleague that the agency should ignore the warnings of the car companies and go forward with the rollback.

Though the Competitive Enterprise Institute doesn't reveal its funding, the Washington Post reported that Marathon Petroleum, Koch Industries, and the AFPM are all among its donors.

am promise

3/18

The 28th Amendment is winning everywhere, not just in New Mexico and New Hampshire. In Wisconsin, Citizen Leaders are pushing their legislature to put a resolution on the ballot after nearly 100 local communities passed resolutions – including one in Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, WI, where it passed with 84 percent support.