Ivey-Soto Sex Harrassment Accuser Anaya In Tight Race For ABQ House Seat; Four Way Battle Tests Strength Of Establishment Progressives On Home Turf; House Leader Chasey Reneges On Neutrality As Race Goes To Wire

Marianna Anaya

Establishment progressives expecting to romp to victory in perhaps the most liberal House seat in the state have been surprised by a stiff challenge from a political newcomer and are now in a down-to-the-wire fight to put one of their own in ABQ House District 18. 

Marianna Anaya, the progressive favorite, is a lobbyist who in 2022 accused ABQ Dem state Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto of sex harassment and in the process became a folk hero of sorts to the far left. She  claimed the harassment occurred in 2015 and demanded that he resign:

As a young staffer for then Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, I attended an NEA reception and you slid your hand across my side and disgustingly groped and pinched my buttocks.

Anjali Taneja

The case was investigated by a legislative ethics panel but the findings were inconclusive and the Senator was never found guilty of any wrongdoing. Ivey-Soto did not resign and is seeking re-election this year. He was, however, stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Rules Committee.

Now Anaya is trying to ride the fame she acquired from that case into the Roundhouse but has run into a formidable roadblock in Anjali Taneja, a family physician who is getting significant financial support from her medical colleagues and who has nearly kept pace with Anaya in fundraising as well as the sign wars in the SE ABQ Heights district 

Taneja is also a progressive but not an establishment progressive as embodied by Anaya, a former deputy director of ProgressNow NM and the recipient of outside aid from progressive PAC money run by longtime consultant Amanda Cooper and involving media consultant and former Big Bill Chief of Staff Dave Contarino.  

But Taneja has managed to to raise $92,000 to Anaya's $120,000. She inched ahead of her in cash on hand with $70,000 to Anaya's $68,000 going into the final month of the June priumary

Two other candidates are in---nurse Gloria Doherty and community education activist Juan Larranaga—but district observers report they are lagging,

The race has become so heated that outgoing Rep. Gail Chasey, the House Majority Leader who has held the seat since 1997 and promised not to endorse anyone, has reneged on that promise as she tries to rescue Anaya, saying in a constituent letter:

. . .You may have heard me say that I would not support any one candidate unless I heard that another campaign was providing misinformation. . .Unfortunately, that's happened with frequent attempts to disparage Marianna as a "lobbyist." That term can conjure up Washington DC Lobbyists, with wealthy, sometimes unscrupulous, clients. . .In contrast. . . Marianna's advocacy and community organizing experience should be celebrated. She has been a leader in advocating to end the 1969 abortion ban. . . Marianna has advanced work on environmental advocacy, the reduction of homelessness. . . That is why she has the support of 25 Democratic legislators, and is the only non-elected official to be endorsed early by Equality New Mexico, our statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization. . .

But hold on, Gail. The reference to Anaya being a lobbyist is fact. Whether that's disparaging or conjures up unseemly images is another matter--a matter of your opinion. 

Even the progressive press refers to Anaya as a "voting rights lobbyist." And she has been a registered lobbyist with the NM Secretary of State. Any questions?

Well, maybe Gail will have time to read the dictionary once she cleans out her Roundhouse office and not try to rewrite it. 

 REALITY OR PAYBACK?

All of this is critical because Ivey-Soto supporters claim that lobbyist Anaya and other progressives have  accused him of killing their version of a voting rights bill that was in his Senate Rules Committee that he chaired at the time. That's why, they assert, it took Anaya so many years to come forward with her groping accusations and later complained that she felt forced to drink wine with him in his Senate office. 

Were the charges real or political payback? That's the question that hangs in the air. 

In other words, the signature platform of the #MeToo movement--that someone is guilty once they are "credibly charged" has been placed on the trash heap of history.

Critics also blast Anaya and the establishment progressives for staying on the sidelines when it was revealed that married GOP state Senator Cliff Pirtle of Roswell had been having an affair with a teen aged staffer of GOP Senator Crystal Brantley who later gave birth to his child. 

Unlike the Ivey-Soto incident, the Democratic-controlled Senate conducted no investigation into whether  Pirtle had used his position of authority over the staffer to persuade the young woman to have sex. In the Pirtle case there was a complete code of silence at the Roundhouse even as the cries of hypocrisy rattled the old building. 

Taneja has a long list of involvement in healthcare in the public and private arenas, UNM Hospital Board of Trustees the BernCo Treatment Advisory Board and executive director of Casa de Salud "created as a space for fair-priced, affordable, integrative health care."

If elected, she would be the only medical doctor in the 70 member House.

Anaya runs her own consulting firm from which she lobbies from and also has a record of community service, including the NM Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network and NM Latino Education Task Force, Board of Directors.

This district is all Dem all the time. No R's need apply and none have. 

THE BOTTOM LINES 

Reader David Luna reacts to our blog where BernCo Dem County Clerk candidate Karen Montoya says her campaign signs have "gone missing" or been "tampered" with:

Hey Joe! RE: Candidate Karen Montoya's crying foul about damage to campaign signs, I wonder if she took the 60 MPH winds we've experienced in the past few weeks into consideration? Seems interesting that she'd immediately blame vandals.

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