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Last Friday I was wrapping up my week, writing plans and reports for clients, finishing calls, when a missed call popped up from a familiar number – a friend I hadn’t spoken with for a while. I got through my virtual in-box and called my friend.
We caught up for a few minutes and then he got to the point – he needed the link to my last column and the NM In Depth story that spawned it. He wanted to track the partisan caucus PAC in-kind donations – the money hardest to track. We talked a little bit about the sheer volume of it, then I asked, “you didn’t take any of it, did you?”
I knew what the answer was before I finished the question: “No.” I was talking to Luis Terrazas, newly reelected to a third term in House District 39 (Grant, Hidalgo and Catron Counties). He’s a Republican in a district where only 30% of voters are registered with the Republican Party. And he won his bid against Democratic challenger Gabby Begay by 8 percentage points.
According to Luis, Begay’s campaign sent out twenty-three mailers. That’s more than one a week, sometimes three a day, according to Luis. Most were negative – and those were sent out by a caucus PAC. Luis told me he sent eight. Four were positive – telling voters who he is and what he has done, and four were what he called “contrast” pieces: comparing the differences between himself and his opponent.
“I don’t like negative campaigning,” Luis said. “And I think if they have a choice, voters don’t either. It’s an easy temptation for candidates because it seems like people win going negative. That’s just because when both candidates go negative, one of them wins.”
Back to the money thing. There was a ton of money being thrown around this cycle in legislative races. And one of the points made in the NM In Depth article I have been referencing is that legislative caucuses have no limit on the amount of money they can spend on in-kind donations, that is, a legislator or caucus can form a PAC, and then the PAC just spends money on individual candidates’ campaigns via ads or mailers.
Begay was one of the top beneficiaries of the largest in-kind caucus PAC spender: The Speaker’s Fund. The Speaker’s Fund is what it says it is: the PAC operated by the Speaker of the House, Javier Martinez. Begay received nearly $105,000 in in-kind donations from The Speaker’s Fund during the general election cycle. Look, if the Speaker of the House of the heavily dominant party in the legislature wants to drop six figures’ worth of product into your campaign, I doubt you would say no, either. I’m not saying I would do any differently.
What I am saying is that this is not necessarily effective, for three reasons. First, with each passing election cycle, the effectiveness of mailers diminishes. I think easily two thirds of them go straight into the trash. Second, I don’t think the firm doing the messaging, based in Albuquerque, knows the voters of southwestern New Mexico nearly as well as Begay and Terrazas do. Unless Begay was composing each of those mailers herself, if they even got read, they likely missed their target.
But here’s the big reason: attacking Luis Terrazas two terms in is a bad bet. Luis unseated five-term incumbent Rudy Martinez in 2020 and came back strong after redistricting in 2022.
His formula is pretty simple: “promises made, promises kept.” He fights for the mining industry, the primary industry in Grant County, which drives residual commerce for Catron and Hidalgo Counties. He’s very blunt about opposing paid sick leave at this point in time: “it’s a $405 million tax increase.” Put simply, if it’s good for his constituents, he’s all in. If it will be a burden for residents or local business or municipalities, forget it.
As we talked I Friday, I got excited. “Do you know how much I want to write a good news column?” I asked. “This is it!” We went back to talking about the race. Luis shared that he saw a growth in local support this cycle than ever without trying. “Merritt, on the other hand, I have never seen so much money from outsiders go to one of my opponents like we saw this year,” he told me. You can see all his donors on the Secretary of State’s website, along with everyone else’s.
If there is a story about contributions in this race, perhaps it’s that Luis didn’t take any of the PAC in-kind contributions that Begay did, meaning that he controlled everything that was sent and said to voters. He knows his district and his race. He didn’t attack his opponent. Some campaigns need to stay local to be successful.
If you spend five minutes on Luis’ Facebook page you’ll find he’s concerned about: wildfire preparedness, housing costs, unfunded mandates for public schools, law enforcement, regional economic development, rural infrastructure sustainment….shall I go on? Luis is heavily involved in the community and on top of the state issues affecting his constituents.
More importantly, he uses social media to be as transparent as possible, posting reports, draft rules, and legislative documents so that his constituents can see the original source documents that inform and regulate the issues that affect them, instead of just hearing his interpretation of them. I appreciate this a great deal. I’d like to see more legislators doing it.
I asked Luis if there are politicians or people who inspire him. “The first thing that comes to mind are some of the legislators from Grant County like Murray Ryan, Dianne Hamilton, Benny Altamirano and Manny Herrera,” he said. “There are others, but these are the ones I personally knew and saw them serve their constituency well.”
I know this column’s title is a little precious given that Luis is a year younger than I am and I am in my mid-50s. But Luis inspires me.
In an environment where hundreds of thousands of dollars are being thrown at you to follow the tribe, he can’t be bought. When the easy path is to hurl cheap shots at your opponent, he opts to remind you why he is different. When you are spending months out of your day job on an unpaid volunteer gig, it would be easy to show up, do what you have to do, and get out; Luis still wants voters, constituents and taxpayers to know what their legislators are doing and takes the time to show them.
Local kid makes good, indeed.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.
