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Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
SANTA FE — The New Mexico Senate voted on Thursday 40-1 to pass legislation that caps the amount of money contributors could give to political candidates and elected officials.
The vote moves New Mexico a step closer to joining the vast majority of states across the country that limit what individuals, political action committees, political parties and businesses can give to candidates or elected officials.
New Mexico is currently among five states, including Illinois, that have no limits at all.
Longtime advocates of ethics reform praised the Senate’s action.
“This does address the perception that campaign contributions have the potential of buying votes,” said state Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, a longtime ethics reform supporter. “We have limited the really big contributions.”
Under the legislation that passed, individuals could not give more than $2,300 during a calendar year. A limit of $5,000 over the same period would apply to a political committee and $10,000 for a political party.
The legislation would also cap what political committees and political parties can give to candidates or to other committees or parties — $5,000 for each during a calendar year. It would further limit to $10,000 what a political party could give to a candidate or another political committee.
The legislation does not include a ban on money from lobbyists and state contractors to candidates, an idea being pushed by Gov. Bill Richardson this year.
The state Senate vote came after about an hour of debate in which lawmakers amended the legislation twice.
One amendment removed a provision that would have repealed the campaign contributions law in 2013, two years after it took effect in 2011.
The other amendment – which added a severability clause — basically means that if someone challenges a provision of the act, the other provisions are not thrown into question and will remain in effect.
A third amendment, offered by state Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell, failed largely along partisan lines. That would have banned contributions from lawyers to candidates running for judicial posts.
Adair chastised the chamber for not supporting his amendment, saying the Senate didn’t want to confront the trial lawyers’ lobby.
Even supporters of the legislation said it wasn’t a perfect bill and explained that allowing people to raise $2,300 per calendar year, as opposed to per election cycle, would help incumbents but hurt challengers.
Federal law sets separate limits for contributions over a primary election cycle and the general election cycle so a person can give $4,800 to a candidate during both cycles.
Other states go with that formula as well.
But supporters said the bill was a step in the right direction.
“This is an incredibly important first step,” said state Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, and the legislation’s sponsor.
This year’s push for ethics reform comes amid three separate investigations that are reviewing practices in state offices, including a federal inquiry into the business practices of the Richardson administration. Two state probes, meanwhile, are looking into the operations of a defunct housing authority run by a friend of state House Speaker Ben Lujan and trying to find federal election money that went missing during the tenure of former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron. In addition, former Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in October.
The limits have faced serious opposition in previous years, partly because legislators wondered why the legislative branch was included in the system when it was Richardson who collected eye-popping contributions. On occasion the governor saw $75,000 and $100,000 contributions go toward his election and re-election campaigns.
The Senate bill now goes to the House.
