Top New Mexico Senate Republican accuses lawmaker of inappropriately helping fund DA’s office

New Mexico Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer (R-Farmington) on Tuesday accused a state lawmaker who recently resigned from her controversial job with a local prosecutor of engaging in a “pay to play” scheme by appropriating taxpayer dollars to the DA’s office before taking a job there.

Sharer in a statement accused Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe), who currently leads the state’s commission dedicated to investigating the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, of “self-dealing” by sponsoring $100,000 in spending in the 2026 legislative session’s capital outlay package for the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which hired her later in the year.

“New Mexicans need to ask a simple question: did Representative Romero send $100,000 in taxpayer money to an office that turned around and put her on the payroll a few months later?” Sharer said in a statement. “That is the definition of pay to play. Whether or not it violated the letter of the law, it is exactly the kind of self-dealing our ethics laws exist to prevent, and it’s exactly why voters have lost trust in this Legislature policing itself.”

Catherine Lynch, a spokesperson for First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies’ office, in an email to Source NM said allegations that Romero and the district attorney traded state funding for a part-time job were “patently false, outrageous and defamatory.”

“The FJDA rejects any suggestion that Andrea Romero’s employment was connected to capital outlay funding for this office,” Lynch said. “When Andrea was considered for the part-time position, the office’s focus was on whether her employment was permissible and her qualifications to perform the work. As we have previously stated, Andrea had proactively sought guidance from the Attorney General’s Office before accepting the position, and our office also conducted its own ethics and conflict review.”

Romero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sharer previously called on Romero to resign from both the Epstein commission and the state House of Representatives. He and House Minority Whip Alan Martinez (R-Rio Rancho) have filed complaints against her with the State Ethics Commission.

Romero resigned from her job with the DA last week after New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sent a letter to district attorneys statewide, instructing them not to hire any sitting lawmakers and to part ways with any lawmakers they employed.

At the time, Romero issued a statement via the Epstein commission’s contracted public relations firm saying she was “deeply disappointed” by Torrez’s letter but would resign from her job at the DA’s office. She added that she would continue to serve as chair of the Epstein “truth commission” and as a state representative for Santa Fe.

The two Republican members of the Epstein “truth commission” subsequently criticized Romero for allegedly tapping the commission’s contracted PR firm. Romero then issued a second statement backtracking her criticism of Torrez and announcing that the commission and the PR firm were “parting” ways.