The Green Party of New Mexico filed a State Supreme Court suit Thursday to challenge denial of its major party status by Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.
Vigil-Giron ruled in March that the Green Party no longer met the requirements for major party status because its presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, received 3.5 percent of the vote - falling short of the 5 percent requirement for major party status.
Green Party officials, however, contend that Marvin Gladstone, its candidate for Position 3 seat on the state court of appeals, garnered 10 percent of the vote in the 2000 election. This should allow them to keep major party status, according to a 1996 interpretation of the state election code by then-Attorney General Tom Udall, said Green Party co-chairman Xubi Wilson.
The Green Party of New Mexico has had major party status since 1994, when Roberto Mondragon received about 11 percent of the vote for governor, Wilson said.
Jerilyn Bowen, a nondegree UNM student and state representative to the national Green Party said the Secretary of State is trying to marginalize the party.
"We feel it's important for us not to let that happen without challenging it," she said. "If they just apply law to serve their own interests, it's a public interest issue. We feel it's a civil rights issue."
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Section 1-1-9 of the state election code states that: "major political party" means any qualified political party, any of whose candidates received as many as five percent of the total number of votes cast at the last preceding general election for the office of governor, or president of the United States, as the case may be, and whose membership totals not less than one-third of one percent of the statewide registered voter file on the day of the governor's primary election proclamation.
The Greens contend that as the statute was interpreted by Udall, the word "candidates" refers to any candidate that happens to be in that election, regardless of whether or not he or she is running for president or governor.
Vigil-Giron's ruling maintains that Udall's opinion was overruled by a March 2000 order issued by First Judicial District Court Judge Stephen Pfeffer in a case involving the Libertarian Party of New Mexico. Pfeffer ruled that a party's presidential or gubernatorial candidate must receive 5 percent of the vote.
"Udall did issue an opinion that it could be other candidates, but he was Attorney General," said Hoyt Clifton, a Secretary of State's office spokesman. "Now a court of law has superseded that."
Clifton said he did not know when the lawsuit would go to the state supreme court, adding that the Greens could reclaim major party status if they meet the requirements in a subsequent election.
Wilson said the party was surprised by the sudden change to its status.
"One would think that if they saw this separate ruling as being so momentous as to change the way to interpret that law, we shouldn't have had a primary in 2000," he said. "We've never gotten 5 percent of vote in gubernatorial or presidential race since 1994. Why then is it being reinterpreted like this now?
"We worked very long and hard to achieve our status, feel it's being snatched away for no reason."
A minor political party cannot hold primary elections, cannot access certain voter registration information, and have candidates listed lower on the ballot, Wilson said.
