New Mexico AG backs Forward Party’s legal battle for ballot access

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez this week backed the state Forward Party’s pending case before a federal appeals court that seeks to get its candidates on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.

New Mexico Forward Party Chair Bob Perls, a former state lawmaker whose campaign to run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján didn’t collect enough signatures to make the ballot, sued New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver in federal court in July. He alleged that she was enforcing ballot-access laws that created unfair burdens to minor-party candidates.

Perls’ argument hinged in part on the number of signatures the state requires candidates to collect to make the ballot. Democrats and Republicans must gather about 2,500 and 2,350, respectively. He and another Forward Party candidate seeking statewide office, however, failed to collect the more than 14,000 signatures the state requires.

That disparity is discriminatory, Perls’ attorneys argued before U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Strickland in August. Strickland earlier this month denied the Forward Party’s motion to stop the secretary of state from enforcing those ballot laws, writing that aspects of the party’s case are likely moot as several of its local candidates qualified for the ballot. Perls subsequently appealed.

In an amicus brief filed Thursday, Torrez and other New Mexico Department of Justice officials backed the Forward Party’s argument before the appellate court.

“Major party candidates, minor party candidates, and independents should compete on a level playing field in New Mexico’s elections. Today, they do not,” they wrote in the filing. “New Mexico requires all candidates to earn their place on the ballot. But major party candidates can stroll onto the ballot while independent and minor party candidates must forge a more difficult path.”

The brief says that New Mexicans “deserve real competition at the polls” and requested that the federal appeals court order that the Forward Party candidates be placed on the ballot.

Lindsey Bachman, the secretary of state’s communications, legislative and executive affairs director, in a statement to Source NM noted that Toulouse Oliver, as the state’s chief election officer, “represents the interests of every voter in our state.”

“She maintains that the federal court made the correct determination and will continue to defend New Mexico’s election laws in this case,” Bachman said.

Perls has previously pointed to the race for Luján’s seat in the U.S. Senate as a prime example. The Republican Party of New Mexico failed to field a candidate ahead of the June primary election, creating a relatively easy path for Larry Marker of Roswell, a write-in candidate whose name did not appear on the ballot, to become the party’s nominee.

Perls told Source NM on Friday that he did not know ahead of time that Torrez’s office was going to support his effort.

“Good for the attorney general for standing up for the voters and not taking a partisan approach,” he said. “Any person on the street would say that the signature requirements are unfair. You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure that out.”