THE BIG SECRET

Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto harassment case shines a bright light on a dark problem in the New Mexico Legislature

BY ANDY LYMAN, JEFF PROCTOR andylyman@sfreporter.com

The harassment case against state Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto—pockmarked, now, with twists, turns and recriminations—stands as a reminder that the public is every bit as in the dark as it ever was when it comes to how Roundhouse leaders deal with allegations against their own.

A hired special counsel’s monthslong investigation into whether Ivey-Soto, an Albuquerque Democrat, sexually harassed and groped progressive lobbyist Marianna Anaya turned up probable cause to move forward on two of Anaya’s three claims, as SFR reported last Thursday. That morning, Ivey-Soto had crowed in an Albuquerque Journal op-ed piece that the case had been closed with no recommendation for punishment.

Inside the chasm between those two realities lies a riddle wrapped up in an enigma, if you’ll pardon the Churchill reference. That’s because, by design, the only person who could turn the lights on and let New Mexicans see just how this case played out is Ivey-Soto himself, and he has no plans to do so.

One thing is clear in the fog: The layers of secrecy surrounding the system New Mexico uses to determine wrongdoing by accused lawmakers is so deeply broken that, now, the courts and the Legislature itself will conduct parallel trains down separate sets of tracks toward a possible fix.

In a letter to SFR submitted Monday, outgoing state Rep. Damon Ely, D-Corrales, and Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, laid out two ideas that would increase transparency and, they say, accountability in harassment cases against lawmakers.

ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN

Essentially, the legislators say a third party—a retired judge or justice, perhaps—should be empowered to break ties in votes taken by a secretive subcommittee that decides whether there’s enough evidence to proceed in harassment cases against legislators. That’s an easy fix, Lopez and Ely write: Just amend the rule at next month’s Legislative Council meeting.

Next, they say, lawmakers should support a bill in the 2023 legislative session that would change the guiding statute and allow all parties to talk about harassment cases as they proceed, the two lawmakers argue.

Both proposals would have made a difference from a sunlight perspective in the Ivey-Soto case.

As legislators grind through the details, the state’s court system has a chance to throw back the curtain as well.

Anaya’s attorney, Levi Monagle, has filed a petition in the First Judicial District Court challenging the statute’s constitutionality. Monagle says the law’s secrecy provision violates his client’s right to free speech and creates an “open-ended gag order.”

On Thursday, Sept. 15, SFR published findings from one of the Legislature’s go-to investigators, attorney Thomas Hnasko, who found probable cause that Ivey-Soto violated the Legislature’s anti-harassment policy twice while interacting with Anaya. Hnasko’s report also detailed other alleged incidents between Ivey-Soto and lobbyists and lawmakers.

Ivey-Soto ignored SFR’s voicemails until Monday, when he says in an interview that Hnasko’s report doesn’t tell the whole story, adding that his attorney filed a rebuttal and Anaya’s attorney submitted a response.

The same statute and rules that require the entire process to be conducted in secret also allow the accused—Ivey-Soto in this case—to sign away any confidentiality.

“I could,” Ivey-Soto tells SFR, “However, Ms. Anaya has filed a lawsuit in the First Judicial District Court. I find it to be an interesting question of law as to whether or not the confidentiality provisions apply, and what applies. If I were to do that in writing right now, that would render their lawsuit moot.”

Hours after SFR published the report, Ivey-Soto told reporters from other news organizations that he had been the victim of a shakedown by Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, and that he filed a report with the FBI accusing Stewart of “extortion.” Ivey-Soto claims that an unidentified third party contacted him, at Stewart’s behest, to convey a message: Step down as chair of the Senate Rules Committee or Hnasko’s report would be released.

Stewart, reached by telephone last week, tells SFR that she was contacted by someone “from the large group of advocates that are upset about this,” who said they had obtained a copy of Hnasko’s report and would disseminate it unless Ivey-Soto relinquished his committee leadership role. Stewart says she then decided to pass the message along to an intermediary.

“The advocates did kind of reach out to me and say, ‘Look, what we really want is him to not be in leadership over these committees where he can lord over others. If he’ll step down from his committees, we won’t’” deliver the report to journalists, says Stewart, who adds that she had not seen the report until SFR published it. “Well, it sounded like a good deal to me. I didn’t want the report out, I didn’t know what was in it, but I did not want it out. It could only hurt people, in my estimation.”

Stewart says she passed the message along to another senator and asked that it be conveyed to Ivey-Soto.

Highlighting the contentious relationship between the two, Stewart accused Ivey-Soto of deflecting media attention from the leaked Hnasko report by claiming he had alerted the FBI. Last year, a handful of Democratic senators publicly came to Stewart’s defense after she accused Ivey-Soto of being abusive during a floor debate.

Neither Stewart nor Ivey-Soto would name the intermediaries allegedly involved in their exchanges.

Stewart also tells SFR, as of Tuesday, she has not been contacted by the FBI.

Frank Fisher, a spokesman for the local FBI office, responded to SFR’S telephone requests for comment with a text message: “The FBI can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Stewart concedes that the process for dealing with alleged harassment is not working. She says lawmakers should have made adjustments to the process since the 2014 legislative investigation of former senator Phil Griego, who ultimately resigned and was sentenced to 18 months in prison over a real-esatet deal. “We’re a couple years late on that. I’ll chalk it up to the pandemic. But we’re supposed to be reviewing it and we aren’t, says Stewart, who supports the changes Lopez and Ely are proposing. Hnasko’s report was addressed to a four-person panel made up of four senators. Besides Lopez, the group includes Sens. Benny Shendo, D-Jemez Pueblo, Pat Woods, R-Broadview and Crystal Diamond, R-Deming. None but Woods, who declined comment, responded to SFR’s requests for an interview.