The office reached an agreement with attorneys for the nonprofit New Mexico Youth Organized allowing the group to hold off on filing while its attorneys fight the order in court, Attorney General's Office spokesman Phil Sisneros said Friday.It strikes us as interesting that these groups who claim that support open and ethical elections (meaning taxpayer funded candidates) work so hard to keep their supporters hidden behind the iron curtain of a 501(c)(3). The Secretary of State and AG are simply requiring that these groups - whose primary function is electioneering - to reveal who their supporters are.
(Sidebar)As odd as it sounds, we don't have any problem with groups lobbying their legislators. Our system was designed to specifically allow groups of people to band together to petition their government. We generally don't agree with the types of things that NMYO, SWOP, The Center for Civic Policy, and others lobby for but we defend their right to do so. However, their non-profit status should not be a shield that allows them to protect their supporters and thus their political associations any more than lobbyists for oil companies should be allowed to withhold their benefactors.
This type of shroud is one of the main objections we have to the Albuquerque Open and Ethical Elections ordinance (taxpayer financed elections). Candidates for office fund their ambitions with taxpayer money while shrouding their associations behind a curtain of money provided at taxpayer expense. This election scheme is neither open nor ethical.
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These non-profit political organizations have a lot of questions to answer - chief among them is why are they hiding and who?
