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SANTA FE — The New Mexico House voted 49 to 17 Friday to cap the amount of money political candidates and elected officials can accept from individuals and political committees.
If the Senate gives its OK and Gov. Bill Richardson signs the bill, the vote would allow New Mexico to cast off the stigma as one of only five states in the union to not limit campaign contributions.
Richardson already has said he would sign the legislation.
The vote came shortly before 3 a.m. after a 2 ½ hour debate during which supporters easily fended off several attempts to amend the legislation.
“I think this is a good bill,” said House Majority Leader Ken Martinez, D-Grants.
But opponents said the legislation left too many loopholes.
“I find this bill disingenuous,” said Rep. Kathy McCoy, R-Cedar Crest. “We are not including the 501c3s (nonprofits). I think until they are included it’s just smoke and mirrors kind of campaign finance.”
One unsuccessful attempt to amend the bill would have restricted nonprofits’ activity during an election year, a rallying cry for some lawmakers and Attorney General Gary King this year.
Under the legislation, individuals could not give more than $2,300 during a primary election cycle and $2,300 during general election cycle to a non-statewide candidate. Non-statewide candidates include state lawmakers.
An individual could give $5,000 per primary election and $5,000 per general election to a candidate for statewide office, such as the governor.
A limit of $5,000 over the same period would apply to political committees. That cap on committees is the same for political parties.
Now a political candidate can accept an unlimited amount of money from a donor.
The contribution limits bill now goes back to the Senate, where it originated. Supporters hope lawmakers agree to changes House committees made to the bill.
One of the more significant alterations the House made to the bill changed the time period for capping contributions. The original bill limited the amount of contributions a candidate could accept to a calendar year. The House changed the bill to cap campaign contributions by primary and general election cycles.
Supporters of the changes explained that capping contributions per calendar year, versus election cycle, is favorable to incumbents. Changing it to per election cycle also would follow federal law, which caps contributions over a primary election cycle and the general election cycle.
Another change makes the effective date Nov. 3, 2010, instead of Jan. 1, 2011.
The bill, along with opening legislative conference committees to the public, may be one of the few bright spots ethics reform supporters can point to.
Legislation to create an ethics commission is stalled in the Senate and Richardson has said he would veto it in its present form. But he hoped that lawmakers would change it and pass it through the Senate. The bill as written would create different processes for reporting ethics violations for executive branch officials, including the governor, and lawmakers.
Meanwhile, a bill that would give a court judge the discretion to fine a public official convicted of corruption equal to the amount of his or her pension is stalled in a House committee. The House Judiciary Committee table that bill Thursday night, which is the same as a death sentence this late in a legislative session.
The Legislature adjourns at noon Saturday.
But not everyone was giving up.
“Fortunately we have a day left and a lot of things can happen in a legislature in the waning hours,” Richardson said Friday. “I am hopeful that possibly that bill can be revived, along with the ethics commission.”
This year’s push for ethics reform was aided by 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.
Campaign contributions legislation has 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.
But this year, given the guilty pleas and convictions of former public officials, contribution limits was viewed as one of the few ethics reform bills that had a reasonably good chance of passing.
