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| Judge Biedscheid |
If Gonzales fails to get the taxpayer money he will have to immediately pivot to raising campaign funds privately and he will have a steep hill to climb in a short of amount of time.
Mayor Keller has qualified for public financing and is resting easy with $602,000 in cash for the November 2 election. Candidate Eddy Aragon will raise money privately.
The clerk found that the Gonzales campaign committed fraud when it submitted $5 individual donations to qualify for the public financing that were not authorized by the voters the campaign claimed. Gonzales' team argues the clerk is a political hack appointed by Keller who is going out of his way to deny Gonzales the money.
In a statement upon his appointment by the NM Supreme Court to hear the case, Biedscheid indicated he is not going to entertain any political arguments at the Friday hearing:
There is a fair amount of argument about motivations, biases and things related to parties in the matter, and frankly, I don't see those as being key to my decision. I am mindful of my role and that it is limited. I am not out to rewrite regulations or election codes, but I am here to see they are properly complied with.
Looking at that code--the 2021 Regulations of the ABQ City Clerk for the Open and Ethical Election Code-- there is this:
Upon receipt of a final Qualifying Contribution report from an Applicant Candidate, the Clerk shall determine whether the Applicant Candidate has. . .been found to have submitted any fraudulent Qualifying Contributions or any falsified acknowledgement forms for Qualifying Contributions or Seed Money Contributions, where the Applicant Candidate knew or should have known of the fraudulence or falsification. If the Clerk makes any of the findings above, the Clerk shall not certify the Applicant Candidate as a Participating Candidate.
The fraud claim is not contested. The Gonzales campaign admits there were forgeries but claim that Gonzales was not responsible. They will argue that Gonzales did not know about the fraud and that even when the bad donations and signatures are accounted for he still has enough to meet the requirement to get taxpayer money and should get it.
A ruling by Biedscheid upholding denial of the funds will likely renew claims by the Gonzales camp that the clerk and now a Democratic judge are partisan and aligned against the conservative Democrat who is running as a quasi-Republican.
The Judge is not a rookie and should be able to craft a concise ruling--no matter how he sees it. Legal reasoning for the denial was previously laid out by a city hearing officer, an attorney, who rejected Gonzales' appeal of the city clerk's ruling, a ruling now being appealed to the district court level.
This will be the highest profile case for the Judge, about 52 and a 1996 graduate of the UNM School of Law. When MLG appointed him to fill a vacancy in the northern First Judicial District in March of 2019 he was a shareholder and vice-president at the Santa Fe law firm of Sawtell Wirth & Biedscheid. The Wirth is Dem State Senator Peter Wirth, Senate Majority Leader.
Biedscheid was appointed to hear the case by the all Dem, five member NM Supreme Court when all ABQ district judges recused themselves from the case because they deal with Gonzales in his role as Sheriff.
Because of the pandemic the hearing will be held via Zoom.
Biedscheid was elected to the bench for a six year term in 2020 when he ran unopposed in the heavy Dem counties of Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos that make up the First Judicial District. More Judge Biedscheid bio here.
POLITICS IN PLAY
When four APD officers suffered injuries when an armed robber shot them Friday morning in the ABQ NE Heights Chief Harold Medina and Mayor Keller were quick to publicly thank the many law enforcement agencies who responded to the shocking incident, including agencies in Sandoval and Valencia counties and the FBI.
Noticeably absent from their thank you list was the Bernalillo County Sheriff's office which also responded to the shootings but whose leader Sheriff Manny Gonzales is running against Keller who is seeking a second term.
Get used to it, Manny. If you win in November you'll be rewarded with the most thankless job of them all.
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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2021
(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2021