Victor S. Lopez

For the majority of my career I have been a people’s attorney, but my advocacy for workers’ rights ended when I took the oath of office as judge.

I was disappointed to see that you gave refuge to an attack piece by one of my opponent’s supporters. Judge races in particular should avoid such political assaults.

The letter ostensibly compares assignment and disqualification issues between the district court and the Workers’ Compensation Administration. I first want to say that it is difficult to compare the two because of differences in how statistics were collected and how they were reported and compiled. A meaningful comparison is difficult for the most seasoned statistician.

In addition, the law, regulation, procedure, number of judges and other factors between the two make a fair comparison impossible. For instance, there are currently 26 judges in the Second Judicial District Court, so the impact of disqualification is broadly distributed among many judges. At the Workers’ Compensation Administration, however, we currently have only five judges, and last summer the agency had only three judges before two new judges were appointed.

Nevertheless, despite the difficulty of comparison, it is true that the insurance industry has taken the lead in regularly utilizing a liberal disqualification process at the agency to shop for judges of their liking. This hyper-critical litigation approach, unfortunately, adds to the poor public perception of attorneys and our judicial system.

I am running for the New Mexico Court of Appeals because I want to help improve the public image of judges and our system of justice. As I have spoken with people about our courts on the campaign trail, they regularly express dissatisfaction with our judges, lawyers and the legal system in general. This perception is unfortunate, but it is one based in part on the extent to which attorneys and litigants will pursue every conceivable avenue to gain a perceived tactical advantage in litigation.

Thus, it is no surprise, but an unfortunate reality, that the insurance industry, third-party administrators and some governmental entities over the years have pursued the judge-disqualification process to secure an audience with judges they perceive will favor their interests. Justice is not about finding the most favorable judge, but about finding a judge who will be fair to all litigants and who will base decisions on a fair reading of the law and a thorough understanding of the facts presented.

Pursuing the greater good

Throughout my career, before becoming a Workers’ Compensation judge, I was a strong advocate for women and men who sustained work-related injuries. I have successfully pursued many workers’ compensation cases from negotiation, to trial, to appeal. I regularly promoted fairer Workers’ Compensation laws before our Legislature, and fought to prevent passage of laws that would hurt the working women and men of New Mexico.

For the majority of my career I have been a people’s attorney, and it is no wonder that my reputation as a protector of the “people” followed me to the bench.

But my advocacy for workers’ rights ended when I took the oath of office as judge. Every judge has a history, and most have been strong advocates for their clients, as I have been, but as judges we must set aside that propensity and pursue the greater good of securing equal justice under the law to all litigants.

That is what I do every day in my work as a judge, and what I would continue to do if elected as the next Court of Appeals judge.

Lopez, a Democrat, is a N.M. Worker’s Compensation judge and a candidate for a seat on the N.M. Court of Appeals. 

Victor S. Lopez

We need to restore public confidence that neither judicial office nor justice is available to the highest bidder.

Thomas J. Cole’s recent column in the Albuquerque Journal, “Parts of State’s Public Campaign Finance Law at Stake,” describes New Mexico’s roller-coaster ride down the legal tracks.

In 2007, the New Mexico Legislature amended the Voter Action Act to address the potentially corrupting influence of large-money contributions in judicial elections. This enactment of public finance represented a Legislative recognition that judicial elections are particularly subject to direct special interest influence.

I decided to use this public finance option in pursuing the New Mexico Court of Appeals in 2012 to avoid the appearance that big-money contributions corrupt judicial races and the selection process.

After practicing law for 28 years and serving as a workers’ compensation judge for nearly five years, I have seen how the system works.

You will hear that judges are not supposed to know whether and how much money attorneys contribute to their campaigns. In fact, the Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits judges from knowing about the contributions.

But judges who pursue privately funded campaigns do not wear blindfolds when they attend their own fundraisers, or at least I have never seen this happen. Nevertheless, the usual attendees to these fundraisers are attorneys, and often they are the same ones who appear before the judge.

So with a wink and a handshake we pretend that judges are “legally” shielded from the knowledge that anyone who attended their fundraiser actually gave a contribution.

How public financing works

Under the public financing option of the Voter Action Act, candidates or their committees may collect initial “seed money” contributions capped at $100 per person, and may not exceed a limit of $5,000.

During the second stage of the Act’s public financing procedure, the campaign must collect about 1,200 contributions of $5 to qualify for the funding. The candidate’s campaign turns these $5 contributions to the secretary of state, who deposits them into the Public Election Fund. This allows the judicial candidate to qualify for public money for the primary and the general elections, which are paid from the fund.

The Voter Action Act addresses the critical concern that an attorney may appear in front of the judge for a trial in the morning, while just the night before that attorney might have attended the judge’s fundraiser. Because these events are “fundraisers,” it does not take much imagination to conclude that money was contributed to the campaign during the event from some or all of those attorneys, although the amounts and identities of contributors are shielded from the judge.

In previous election cycles for the appellate courts, some of these contributions were small, but some ranged up from several hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. This is our current process, and it is perfectly legal, but its continuance does little to instill confidence among the public that judicial elections are free of big-money influence.

A sigh of relief

I have spoken with many New Mexico voters during my campaign. I have seen people breath a sigh of relief that someone is using the public financing option to address the perceived problem of special interest influence in judicial elections. We need to restore public confidence that neither judicial office nor justice is available to the highest bidder.

The current challenge to the Voter Action Act seeks to limit the matching funds provision, which would put public financed judge candidates on equal footing with their privately funded opponents. The court will need to determine whether judicial races are unique in our political system and whether the Voter Action Act addresses the compelling interest that the state has in reducing corruption and the appearance of corruption in these campaigns.

This is particularly important where judge contributions and the exercise of the judicial function can take place from one day to the next. The public financing option should have a fair hearing before the courts.

Lopez is a candidate for a seat on the N.M. Court of Appeals.