SOS Duran's Car Involved in Fatal Accident

Here's some sad news. Secretary of State  Dianna Duran's car was one of several vehicles that struck a pedestrian on Santa Fe's bypass (NM 599) last night.

Apparently she driving was one of the cars that hit the man after he initially was struck on the road.

New Mexican crime reporter Geoff Grammer has the story HERE.


Duran issued a statement this morning:

My thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim who lost his life Thursday evening on Highway 599 and Camino La Tierra.

This past evening at approximately 7:30 while driving home from work, my car was apparently one of multiple vehicles to pass over what appeared to be an animal that had been struck in the middle of the right lane of Highway 599.

We later learned that what I believed to have been an animal was in fact the body of someone who had been hit a few minutes before while crossing the highway.

I am sure other drivers have been just as shocked and saddened as I have been to learn what had actually taken place in this tragedy. My thoughts and prayers are with the family for this tragic loss of life.

Police Capt. Aric Wheeler told Grammer, "We aren't sure how many vehicles may have hit the man or maybe drove through the scene collecting evidence without even realizing it."

UPDATE 3:45 pm: Geoff Grammer has more details on The New Mexican site.

SOS to Send 104 Cases to Attorney General

Secretary of State Dianna Duran will be sending the Attorney General’s Office the names of 104 non-citizens who have registered to vote in New Mexico.

Of these, 19 have actually cast ballots in elections in the state, according to a report Duran submitted this week to legislators and county clerks.

The 18-page report, called “Interim Progress Report: Ongoing Efforts by the Secretary of State’s Office to Improve the Accuracy and Integrity of the Statewide Voter File.” doesn’t accuse anyone of consciously committing voter fraud. But the report says the possibility of fraud is there.

More in tomorrow's New Mexican.

The report is below:

SOS Interim Report 11 17 11 Final

A Tale of Two Non-Citizen Voters

Secretary of State Dianna Duran last week informed Attorney General Gary King about two cases of non-citizens registering to vote in New Mexico.

But neither case involves sneaky illegal immigrants using their New Mexico driver's licenses to register in hopes of committing voter fraud.

In fact both cases involve people who registered to vote not realizing that it was against the law to do so. And in fact, both voluntarily asked to be taken off the voter rolls, Duran said.

The problem, Duran told King, could be the voter registration process, specifically third-party registration agents. Some foreign nationals used  foreign documentation to get their voter registrations.

These are the first — and so far only — specific cases of noncitizens on the voter rolls Duran has reported since she told legislators earlier this year that she had found 117 foreign nationals who had registered to vote. Duran said at the time at least 37 of those people had actually voted in state elections.

That's the case with one of the two people Duran told King about. He's been voting in nearly every election since 1998.

My story about this is in today's New Mexican is HERE

Here's Duran's letter to King.

Duran King Letter 11-3-11

ACLU Sues SOS

The New Mexico branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Dianna Duran claiming she violated open-records act.

The suit, filed in state district court in Albuquerque, says Duran illegally denied the organization’s public records request for documents related to 37 cases of  foreign nationals voting in the state alleged by Duran during a committee meeting of this year's regular legislative session. Duran improperly claimed executive privilege in denying the requests for documents, the suit alleges.

“These sorts of hit-and-run allegations are reckless and irresponsible,” ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson said in a news release. “Without offering any proof, the Secretary of State has undermined the public’s confidence in our elections system while hiding the evidence for her claims behind the cloak of executive privilege.”

One of the things claimed in the lawsuit is that the reason Duran turned over approximately 64,000 registered voter records to the state Department of Public Safety was "an effort to convert public records to records not obtainable pursuant to the IPRA."

However, because Duran has since said, in an interview with me, as well as at a recent interim legislative committee hearing, that she wasn't alleging any criminal activity, those records are not exempt from the Inspection of Public Records Act.

The suit also claims the whole SOS/MVD investigation was spurred by an email from Colorado elections director Judd Choate to Duran's office.

The e-mail from Mr. Choate stated that on March 8, 2011, the Colorado Secretary of State would hold a news conference to discuss legislation under consideration in the Colorado House that would allow the Colorado Department of State to spot check and investigate voter registrations for the possibility that non-citizens are 1) currently registered to vote, 2) are being accidentally registered to vote, or 3) are willfully seeking to register in violation of both state and potentially federal law. In addition, simultaneous with this press conference, the Colorado Department of State planned to issue a report outlining the research they had undertaken to determine if there were persons currently registered to vote who may not be U.S. citizens. Mr. Choate concluded by stating that “I wanted to warn you that this report will be issued in case it becomes a national story requiring that you address the issue relative to your state.”

UPDATE 4:20 pm: I just spoke SOS chief of staff Ken Ortiz who told me his office has not yet been served with the suit, so he can't comment. "I just find it interesting that the media got the suit before we did," he said.

Watch this space as well as tomorrow's New Mexican.

Here's the suit:

ACLU v Duran

Could 10 Percent of Votes Cast in NM Last Year Have Been Illegal?

That's what the Special Investigations Division of the New Mexico Public Safety Department has been asked to look into. The Secretary of State's Office has handed over 64,000 or so cases of possible voter fraud to the DPS for investigation.

You can read my story in today's New Mexican HERE.

How many of these will end up being indicted?  How many of those will end up in convictions?

The answer to those questions are months, if not years, down the road.

I'll let you know if I hear anything.

State Police Are Investigating Alleged Voter-Fraud

According to a March 25 letter from Secretary of State Dianna Duran to Bill Hubbard, director of the State Police Special Investigations Division, the State Police have started an investigation of the 37 foreign nationals who Duran last month alleged voted in New Mexico elections.

Below is the letter, which the Secretary of State's office sent me today. Read tomorrow's New Mexican for more information. (I'll post the link here later when it's up.)

Duran Letter to Dps

Roundhouse Roundup: SOS Won't Release Alleged Voter-Fraud Documents

A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican
April 7, 2011

Secretary of State Dianna Duran made a startling announcement last month during a legislative hearing on whether voters should be required to show photo identification at the polls.

SOS Dianna Duran

Duran said in cross-checking voter registrations with a state Motor Vehicle Division database, her office had found 117 foreign nationals who had registered to vote. All listed Social Security numbers on their voter registrations that didn’t match up with their names. What’s more, Duran said, at least 37 of those people had actually voted in state elections.

So who are these people who might have committed voter fraud?

The secretary of state won’t say.

The day after that hearing, I submitted a request to Duran’s office under the state Inspection of Public Records Act for copies of the 117 voter registrations, plus any records she had that indicated 37 of those people had voted.

After the 15-day response deadline allowed under the law, I was notified last week that my request was denied.

Citing state and federal privacy laws relating to MVD records, Secretary of State’s Office records custodian Christiana Sanchez wrote, “Based upon advisement of our legal counsel, the records are prohibited from release.

“Moreover, the Secretary of State’s Office does not maintain the original voter registration forms for registered voters,” the denial letter stated. “The original forms are maintained by the county clerks in each county. There are approximately 1.16 million registered voters in the state of New Mexico. Therefore, while we anticipate a future comprehensive review of voter registration forms, we cannot provide copies of any voter registration forms that meet your requested criteria at this time.”

Of course I hadn’t asked to see all 1.16 million forms, just the 117 she talked about at the legislative hearing. And I would have settled for only those for the 37 apparently illicit voters.

Out of the FOG: As I often do in such situations, I sought advice from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. Executive Director Sarah Welsh told me, “The SOS may not maintain the original voter registration forms, but if they received copies of forms (or the same information in some other format) from the county clerks, those records would now be SOS records subject to IPRA.”

As Welsh explained it, the Inspection of Public Records Act defines “public records” as materials that are “used, created, received, maintained or held by or on behalf of any public body and relate to public business.”
Therefore, Welsh said, if Duran’s office received and is holding voter-registration forms, and the forms aren’t subject to other confidentiality provisions, the documents should be released.

I asked the secretary of state about that but hadn’t gotten a response as of Wednesday evening.

I’m not the Lone Ranger: I’m not the only one who requested documents pertaining to Duran’s voter-fraud allegations. The American Civil Liberties Union made a far more sweeping request for documents from both the Secretary of State’s Office and the Governor’s Office the same day I made my request.

But according to the Clearly New Mexico blog — which is a project of the left-leaning Center for Civic Policy — the ACLU didn’t get much more than I did.

ACLU Executive Director Peter Simonson told the blog that he got a packet of documents from the SOS but nothing so far from the governor. The documents he received from Duran were so heavily redacted, he said, “they don’t allow us to make any determination.”

A March 15 news release from the Secretary of State’s Office about the alleged 37 vote-fraud perpetrators said, “These are still under investigation to verify the accuracy of the information.”

At this point, it’s still unknown whether any of that information has been verified.

Duran Puts SOS Employee on Leave For Racist Joke

Secretary of State Dianna Duran put an office employee on leave for a racist joke that was found on a spreadsheet form for political committees that could be downloaded from the SOS Website.

Duran also said she'd called two African-American legislators -- Reps. Jane Powdrell Culbert, R-Corrales and Sheryl Stapleton-Williams, D-Albuquerque -- who appeared to be the target of the offensive material. She said she had a conversation with Powdrell-Culbert and had left a message for Stapleton-Williams.

A news release from Duran Thursday afternoon said:

“I was shocked and disappointed to learn that a state employee apparently posted what can be interpreted as racially offensive language in a sample finance report,” Duran said, “I find these actions deeply offensive and I immediately ordered the materials removed and I initiated an investigation. The individual involved has been placed on administrative leave while the matter is being reviewed.

"... It is critical that New Mexicans have faith that the Office of the Secretary of State will protect the rights of all New Mexicans equally and that I will not tolerate any form of racism or bigotry in this office. Violations of this policy will result in swift and decisive action.”

Duran just told me that she can't release the name of the employee put on leave has not been released because of state personnel laws.

The material in question, which has been removed since this morning, was on a spreadsheet for use by Political Action Committes in filing their 2011 reports.

What apparently was supposed to be a sample entry listed a fictitious organization called "National Organization of the Beer Drinkers and Guzzlers."

The last name of the "contributor" was "Sheryl Powdrell-Culbertson" while the first name was "Jefferson Davis."

Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of America.

I spoke with Powdrell-Culbert earlier today. She told me she didn't want to comment on "something so stupid." She also said she knows Duran is not a racist. "Dianna's one of the nicest people you're going to find,"  the lawmaker said.

I'm still waiting on a call from Williams-Stapleton.

The matter was first reported by The Justice League, a liberal PAC, which immediately called for Duran's Resignation.

"Secretary Duran should be ashamed of herself," PAC Treasurer Eli Il Yong Lee said in a news release. "We expect more from elected officials. There is no place for racism in New Mexico, much less in a state office."

King vs. Duran

Looks like there's trouble brewing between Attorney General Gary King and Secretary of State Dianna Duran.

On Wednesday, Deputy AG Albert Lama wrote the SOS a letter in which he disagreed with Duran's determination on the issue of Gov. Susana Martinez's campaign committee paying for radio ads about the driver's license bill.

My story about that is in today's New Mexican HERE

But Duran says that nobody in her office received any letter. And she wasn't happy that I knew about it before she did.

"We find it surprising and unlikely that the attorney general would decide to create some unsolicited legal advice for our office and immediately forward it to the media before sending it to us," she said in an e-mail to me Wednesday night.

 "This would seem to be a violation of the ethical obligations of any attorney," Duran said. "... we think it unlikely their office would breach the obligations it owes to this office by producing unsolicited legal advice and sending its advice to the media, and not to its client. If this is authentic, it is a serious matter."

I'm pretty sure it's authentic. I got it from the AG's office, not some guy in the parking lot.

Let's see how this plays out.

Well THAT Was a Short Investigation

Secretary of State Dianna Duran is sticking by her initial opinion that Gov. Susana Martinez's campaign's recent radio ads did not violate any election laws. The ads were trying to whip up support for bills that would deny driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

The Martinez campaign had 20 days to respond to a letter sent last week by Duran's office. Obviously, they didn't take that long.

According to a letter sent today to Somos Un Pueblo Unido, which had filed the complaint against Martinez, the campaign committee argues that it now serves as Martinez's re-election committee. The expenditures were made to "produce and air radio spots to promote the governor's issues and ideas and that the promotion of such issues and ideas are standard campaign activity."

Duran also points out that former Gov. Bill Richardson's committee spent $1.3 million during the first four months of his second term. (Duran doesn't mention that early 2007 was the time in which Richardson formally began his presidential campaign.)

Duran said she does not intend to refer the complaint to the attorney general.

UPDATE 7 p.m. Marcela Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, responded to the decision. "In her response to this complaint, it seems the Governor is admitting what we've suspected all along, that the true motive for pushing the driver's license issue isn't based on what's good for public safety, but on her re-election campaign. That's extremely unfortunate for New Mexico."

DURAN Letter to Somos

SOS Duran Launches Investigation of Gov. Martinez's Radio Ads

Last week Secretary of State Dianna Duran said she believed that Gov. Susana Martinez did not violate any election law by using leftover campaign funds to buy radio ads.

But now it appears Duran's office is conducting some type of investigation of the matter.

The ads were aimed at whipping up public support for a bill to repeal the law allowing illegal immigrants to be issued driver's licenses.

The immigrants rights group Somos Un Pueblo Unido complained to Duran and Attorney General Gary King that the state Campaign Reporting Act restricts the spending of campaign funds after an election to “payment of campaign debts, donations to charities or the state’s general fund, contributions to other candidates or political parties and refunds to the contributors.”

Duran's initial response was that the ads were an allowable expense under the law.

Then Common Cause New Mexico joined the fray and asked the AG to investigate.

On Feb. 25 Duran's ethics investigator Christiana Sanchez sent a letter to Martinez's unnamed campaign manager asking for a written response within 20 days.

When I asked for a response last week, Martinez campaign spokesman Danny Diaz said, “It’s ironic that a radical special-interest group that believes illegal immigrants have a right to New Mexico driver’s licenses does not believe the Governor has a right to free speech. We disagree.”

In an email about Duran's letter Somos executive director Marcela Diaz said, "New Mexicans deserve to know how the Governor justifies using campaign funds to pay for inflammatory and misleading ads regarding such a complex public policy issue.”

Here's the letter from the SOS:

Duran Letter to Martinez Campaign

SOS Duran Accuses Herrera of Contract "Irregularities"

Secretary of State Dianna Duran this afternoon said she has referred "several matters of serious concern" to State Auditor Hector Balderas. She's talking about “ a number of irregularities in contracts and purchasing processes conducted by the previous administration which appear to violate the New Mexico Procurement Code ..."

Duran also said that some documents appears to be missing from the office’s files. "Unless those documents are recovered, their disappearance could impair an independent audit that will be conducted later this year," a news release said.

Also, Duran said, data on some hard drives on office computers has been deleted. "The data, if not recoverable, is significant to the core operations of the Office of the Secretary of State," the release said.

Duran also raised the possibility that federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds were spent appropriately and whether timely reports were submitted to the federal government.

 “I intend to bring this office into full compliance with the law,” said Duran, “and so I am asking for an independent investigation by the State Auditor into a number of issues that appear to raise doubts.”

UPDATE: (3:35 pm)  Herrera, in a phone interview, disputed Duran's complaints.

She pointed out that in her office's last budget in June she got a clean bill of health with no findings.

Herrera said that after losing the election, she and her staff made a concentrated effort to have a smooth transition and said "went out of our way to leave everything in place," because, she said, there had been little communication between her staff and the staff of her predecessor, Rebecca Vigil-Giron. "I didn't want anyone to have to go through what I did," Herrera said.

Herrera denied that there are missing documents. She said that the contents of her computer and that of her deputy, Don Francisco Trujillo, were sent to the state archives. She also said Duran's staff has called Herrera's former staff to ask where certain things could be found.

"I don't know why (Duran) doesn't continue to move on," Herrera said.

Internal Polling

It's been rumored for awhile that polls by both Secretary of State candidates are showing Republican Dianna Duran leading Democrat Mary Herrera. I just got evidence of such a poll. It's a couple of weeks old, but it claims a 12 point lead for Duran.

According to the poll, Duran had 46 percent to Herrera's 34 percent. That leaves 20 percent undecided (which might look high, but this is a down-ballot race that's seen only minimal television advertising by either candidate.)

The poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, a GOP firm. They interviewed 800 likely voters on October 14 & 17-18, 2010 including 100 cell phone interviews on October 16th. The margin of error is 3.4 percent. Duran Poll Oct 14 Meanwhile, the Diane Denish gubernatorial campaign also released an internal poll today. This one shows Denish, the Democrat in the race, just one point behind Republican Susana Martinez.

It has to be noted that the only recent polls showing a close race have all come from the Denish camp. Real Clear Politics  shows a 9-point average Martinez lead, though the latest poll listed there was done on Oct. 14.

Denish's poll was conducted October 20 – 24 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic firm. They talked to 603 likely voters. Margin of error is 4 percent.

Oct 25 Denish Poll

Duran Launches Ad for SOS Race

Just one day after state Democrats announced a television commercial for embattled Secretary of State Mary Herrera, the state Republican Party sent notice of an ad for its SOS candidate Dianna Duran.

The SOS Race

Pollster Brian Sanderoff hasn't done any polling on the Secretary of State race. But he's got some thoughts about what might happen in the race between incumbent Mary Herrera and challenger Dianna Duran.

Read about that in my look at the race for Secretary of State is in Wednesday's New Mexican. You can find it HERE 

A detailed look at the fundraising efforts by Herrera and Duran is HERE 

Quick biographical facts on the candidates are HERE 

And if you ever wondered what the secretary of state is supposed to do, check THIS.

Herrera Vs. Duran Debate

You can read all about the Mary Hererra-Dianna Duran debate  HERE.

You can listen to it this afternoon at 4 p.m. on KSFR

You can watch it-- at least Comcast cable customers can -- on Channel 16 at 6 p.m.

Asked during the debate about the public records request Herrera made in August for emails among various of her staff and political enemies, Herrera said she had heard that someone was "attacking" her family. But asked whether she found any evidence among the documents she'd requested that her family was being attacked, Herrera said that she hadn't had time to pick up the records she'd requested.




I was one of the panelists, along with fellow Santa Fe journalists Julia Goldberg of the Santa Fe Reporter, Dan Boyd of The Journal North and Bill Dupuy of KSFR News.

Turner & Weh Co-Chairing Duran SOS Campaign

Allen Weh, who was defeated in the Republican gubernatorial primary by Susana Martinez, has yet to get behind Martinez candidacy.

However, he has united with a fellow GOP primary candidate Doug Turner in getting behind state Sen. Dianna Duran, who is running for Secretary of State against incumbent Democrat Mary Herrera.

According to a statement from Turner, who finished third in the gubernatorial primary, "As we look toward the next presidential cycle in 2012, it is also essential that we have a Secretary of State that will ensure that we have honest elections and one who will work to eradicate voter fraud in our great state."