‘Mismanagement’ has Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa and others frustrated, so Espinosa may try to unseat the first-term secretary of state
Frustration with Mary Herrera’s management of the secretary of state’s office has Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinosa saying she is seriously considering challenging Herrera in the Democratic primary next year.
Espinosa’s is a frustration shared by a number of county clerks throughout the state.
“The mismanagement in that office has reached historic proportions,” Espinosa said in an interview. “There are no contracts for voting machine maintenance. Online campaign reporting is an abysmal failure. The only saving grace in the general election was that it was not close; otherwise, the lack of administrative rules and procedures would have resulted in costly litigation and clouded the results.”
Espinosa said she hasn’t made a final decision on whether to challenge Herrera but will do so in the coming months. She said she is being urged by many other county clerks and others who know about the problems, including state legislators, to run.
Secretary of State spokesman James Flores took issue with Espinosa’s complaints, saying Herrera’s office has accomplished “many things with little or no funding,” and has “issued more administrative rules and procedures than any past administration.”
As evidence of the good work Herrera’s office is doing, Flores cited an editorial that ran in the Albuquerque Journal shortly after the November election praising Herrera and county clerks for a successful effort.
“Hard work, innovative thinking and proactive initiatives will continue to be the norm in her administration,” Flores said.
But Espinosa isn’t the only one who sees problems. Sheryl Nichols, the deputy clerk in Los Alamos County and president of the state clerk’s association, said there are “lots of issues that need to be addressed” in Herrera’s administration.
“I think we should be further along than we are, although we’ve been working very hard to remedy these situations,” Nichols said.
Some other clerks and clerk employees from around the state also expressed concern about the operation of the secretary of state’s office, though none would speak for the record because they have to work with all involved.
Asked if Espinosa should challenge Herrera in a primary, Nichols said, “competition is an excellent catalyst for the best candidate for the state.” She added that Espinosa is an intelligent clerk who does a good job of running her office and lobbying the Legislature.
Herrera, a former Bernalillo County clerk, is in her first term as secretary of state.
The issues
Among the problems Espinosa listed with the secretary of state’s office is a long-standing dispute over whether the state or counties own and are responsible for repairs and upgrades to voting machines. The state purchased them several years ago, then tried to push the upkeep costs on the counties, which rejected that proposition, saying they weren’t involved in the decision to buy the machines in the first place.
The fight recently culminated with the secretary of state canceling the contracts for software and firmware maintenance and support for the machines, which could leave the state and counties less prepared for problems that might arise during elections.
But Flores said the contract was canceled only because the Legislature failed to approve this year a bill that would have provided funding for future maintenance. He pointed out that all voting machines in the state were under maintenance warranty for the 2008 election.
As for the issue with the state’s online campaign-reporting system, Herrera pledged when running for office in 2006 to improve the arcane and cumbersome method of making the information available to the public. Espinosa pointed out that it has not happened.
Flores said the office is “in the process” of creating a new system “in-house… without adequate funding.” He called that “very proactive on the part of this administration.”
Espinosa also cited the sending out of thousands of mailers to educate people about where and how to vote before last year’s general election that contained erroneous information. Espinosa said Herrera, instead of apologizing for a mistake that affected 97,000 voters in Santa Fe County, blamed Espinosa in a TV interview.
“It’s not that I want to start a public battle, but she’s just always blaming someone else for her errors,” Espinosa said.
And, citing the fact that Herrera was recently elected president of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Espinosa said Herrera is “off doing that” when she should instead be in the office fixing problems.
‘These things are haunting us’
While Espinosa, a former employee of the secretary of state’s office, is serious about the prospect of running next year, she’s leaving the door open to instead running when Herrera is term-limited from running again in five years.
“I will run someday, and I can wait until she’s done… but some of these things are haunting us,” Espinosa said of the problems in Herrera’s office. “I think that I could challenge her and maybe even beat her.”
“Truthfully, I have the interest in doing it and I can be assertive when it comes to campaigning and proving myself,” Espinosa said.
Even before next year’s election, Nichols says she’s hoping for progress on a number of issues in the secretary of state’s office. She mentioned Herrera’s newly hired elections director — Santa Fe attorney A.J. Salazar, who previously worked for the House speaker and the Santa Fe County district attorney.
“I don’t know what his qualifications are to hold this position, but I look forward to meeting with him and fleshing out what he can do to benefit the state of New Mexico,” Nichols said.
“I think we have a huge, tremendous amount of obstacles and challenges in this state considering the voting systems, the monopoly that’s been created dealing with one vendor (on the voting machines), and all that needs to be addressed, and so this is a huge undertaking for that office,” she said. “I’m hoping that guy comes with some kind of knowledge so he can get this ball rolling.”