Dona Ana County Dumps New Mexico’s Most Corrupt Senator, Daniel Ivey-Soto, as Election Consultant

Public documents indicate that Dona Ana County dropped Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto as an election consultant at the end of last month. A March 2023 email from County Clerk Amanda Askin to Ivey-Soto states that the county cannot renew Ivey-Soto’s contract because they are hiring someone to fulfill public documents requests instead. As consolation, she offers the possibility that the county might periodically hire him on an hourly basis for technical assistance. Ivey-Soto responded to Askin, refused the offer, and acknowledged the end of the 14-year long contractual relationship.

Dona Ana County is the second largest county in the state, and the second largest contributor to Ivey-Soto’s corruption machine. Dona Ana County has paid Ivey-Soto a total of $562,000 since 2009.

The Estancia News has covered the corruption of Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto extensively here, here, and here.

Ivey-Soto got his start as an “election consultant” for Soros-backed Maggie Toulouse-Oliver in 2008, a few months after she was appointed as Bernalillo County Clerk. Ivey-Soto added Dona Ana and Santa Fe Counties as clients in 2009, Chaves County in 2016, and Curry County in 2022.

Ivey-Soto influences the county clerks in all 33 counties through his “New Mexico Clerks” organization where he appointed himself to advise and consult with all 33 county clerks on election matters regardless of whether they have a contractual relationship. This group is also known as the “Clerks’ Affiliate.”

Ivey-Soto was elected as Senator for New Mexico’s District 15 in 2013. At that time, he should have ended his direct contractual relationships with county clerks when he took the job to represent the interests of citizens in District 15. Or at the very least he should have disclosed this new conflict of interests to both the public and his clients. He did neither.

Instead, he used his new position to advance the interests of his clients from inside the legislature by assisting them in drafting legislation and pushing it forward, often in opposition to the interests of his constituents. Ivey-Soto’s campaign committee also made maximum campaign donations to fellow legislators who then sponsored his bills. Ivey-Soto has collected $1.4 million dollars from counties since his election to the legislature. He has never registered as a lobbyist.

There are plenty of indications that he has no interest in representing the people of District 15 when it comes to their elections. He has been caught disparaging the public and pitting county clerks against their own constituents by urging them to ignore concerns about the security, legality, and accuracy of New Mexico’s elections.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, Ivey-Soto appears to have lied to the IRS by registering his company as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. In exchange for tax-free status, Ivey-Soto is prohibited from participating in partisan politics – something he is clearly doing anyway.

His votes in the legislature this year, reveal that he’s not really working for the county clerks, but rather for his original benefactor Maggie Toulouse-Oliver, now Secretary of State, and her radical left agenda. The Clerks’ Affiliate sent a letter this year to the legislature urging them not to pass HB 4, which was also widely condemned by the public as being a bill that undermined election integrity and the public’s faith in elections. The bill sailed through every committee hearing and final votes on the floor of the legislature anyway. Ivey-Soto cheered it at every step and voted for it both in committee and on the floor.

We reached out to election integrity expert, Erin Clements, for her thoughts on Dona Ana County and Ivey-Soto parting ways. This is what she had to say:

“New Mexicans are sick of having their concerns ignored while politicians routinely sell them out and fail to fulfill their duty as public servants. They’re sick of people like Daniel Ivey-Soto flaunting the law and manipulating their county clerks into going against the interests of the public. While I doubt Dona Ana County’s decision to drop Ivey-Soto from the payroll had anything to do with his corruption – Dona Ana County being widely known for their own corruption – it’s a positive step that our money is being directed into fulfilling document requests from the public instead of going into the pocket of a tool of the radical left.”

Erin Clements, election integrity expert