Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Julienne Trying to Sink Haaland

Marie Julienne, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor who did not file enough petition signatures to get on the ballot is challenging the nominating petitions of Debra Haaland, the other Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, trying to knock Holland off the ballot as well.
Debra Holland

Among the reasons for Julienne's challenge, which was filed last week in state district court in Albuquerque, is that some of Holland's petitions filed earlier this month, didn't include Spanish translations for words and phrases for the name of party (Democrata) or the name of the office ("asistente del gobernador").

Thus, the complaint said, those petitions "do not convey necessary and important information in Spanish required to be known by potential Spanish language signees."

Also, Julienne's complaint said, some pages abbreviated "lieutenant governor" as "Lt. Gov." instead of spelling it out.

Such alleged errors, the complaint says "demonstrates malfeasance and undermines our democratic electoral process."

Haaland said Wednesday that she is confident in her petition signatures. "I'm not worried about this, she said." She said she her attorney is looking at Julienne's complaint.

Julienne also said that many of Haaland's signatures one person signed names of others, persons not registered Democrats or not registered at address listed.

To qualify for the Democrats' pre-primary convention next month, candidates for statewide office need 2,186 signatures of registered Democrats in New Mexico. Julienne claims that Haaland, who filed a total of 3,222 signatures, actually filed only 1,043 valid signatures.

However, according to the Secretary of State's website, Julienne herself filed only 1,312 signatures, which, as the website notes, is not enough to qualify for the pre-primary convention.

More in tomorrow's New Mexican