Legislature passes campaign contribution limit bill

New Mexico joined the rest of the country Saturday.

The Land of Enchantment’s change in status came quickly, and quietly in the New Mexico State Senate shortly after lawmakers convened  for the last day of the 2009 legislative session.

The Senate agreed to changes the House had made to legislation that will cap the amount of money political candidates and elected officials can accept from individuals and political committees.

With that simple procedural vote the Legislature sent the bill to Gov. Bill Richardson, who has said he will sign it.

With his signature, New Mexico will join 45 other states that already have laws on the books to limit campaign contributions to political candidates. New Mexico currently is one of only five states in the union to not limit campaign contributions.

Advocates were ecstatic with the news.

“I think the legislative leadership deserves a lot of credit for pushing this bill through to the governor’s desk,” said Steven Robert Allen, executive director of New Mexico Common Cause, one of the primary supporters of the legislation. “It’s an important step forward in the cause of ethics reform in New Mexico. ”

Under the legislation, individuals cannot 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 or attorney general.

A limit of $5,000 over the same period would apply to political committees. That cap on committees is the same for political parties.

As it is now, a political candidate for a state or legislative office can accept an unlimited amount of money from a donor.

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.

The change didn’t sit well with some senators.

“It does limit the senators, but so be it,” said Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque. “Senators, we have less opportunity for those who do get the big chunk of change to raise money.”

Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington, was troubled by what was not in the bill.

“Did we do anything on the 501c3s, or 4s,” Sharer asked. “Is there any kind of limit on those folks in this amendment.

Lawmakers in the House had tried to change the bill early Saturday with an amendment that would have restricted nonprofits’ activity during an election year, a rallying cry for some lawmakers and Attorney General Gary King this year. But they were unsuccessful.

“I was kind of hoping that we would address that in the process,” Sharer said. “We know other people can get involved in elections and they seem exempt from whatever the limits are , as well as wherever they raise the money, spend the money. I just want to point that out. There still seems to be plenty of room to go around whatever we are trying to do here.”

So there appeared to be enough doubt among lawmakers to cause concern among advocates about the number of supporters who might agree to House changes.

Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, who presides over the Senate, did her part for the cause.

She asked state senators to record their vote by voice, which means supporters and opponents shout their votes. The lawmakers shouting “no” definitely sounded louder than the “ayes.”

Denish called it for the yes votes.

“The ayes have it,” Denish said. No one challenged Denish’s ruling, as sometimes occurs.

If the nos had carried the day, the House and Senate would have had to appoint a conference committee with less than three hours to go in the session.

The Senate’s vote occurred about six hours after the House voted 49 to 17 Friday to pass the campaign contributions limits bill.

The campaign contribution limits bill, along with opening legislative conference committees to the public, is one of the few bright spots ethics reform supporters can point to.

This year’s campaign for ethics reform was pushed along 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,  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.

This story originally appeared with the wrong byline.