NM’s Secretary of State, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Paid NM Senator Daniel Ivey-Soto Nearly $1 Million in Taxpayer Money When She Was a County Clerk – Why?
Daniel Ivey-Soto, New Mexico’s most corrupt senator and his shell game played with taxpayer dollars.
Guest post by the Editor of Estancia News
As revealed in Part 1 of this series, Daniel Ivey-Soto is a New Mexico Senator who also runs a non-profit called Vandelay Solutions which advises county clerks on technical matters related to elections and other duties.
This article will focus on partisan activities pursued by Ivey-Soto and the fact that he has received at least $925,000 in taxpayer dollars for consultation and assistance in drafting, promoting, and voting on legislation that directly benefits his clients and friends, but hurts the public.
Vandelay Solutions was previously known as “NM Clerks,” but that company was dissolved and rebranded as Vandelay Solutions in 2019 after some clerks complained that the original name could mislead people into thinking Ivey-Soto’s company was a government agency. Ivey-Soto admitted as much in a recorded conversation that election workers were concerned that he was “running the clerks.” Instead of clearly communicating his company is not a government agency, Ivey-Soto still uses the “NM Clerks” brand for the email list serve he runs with all 33 county clerks, according to public documents obtained by Estancia News.
While not all of the 33 clerks are paying clients, it is unclear whether the clerks understand that Ivey-Soto has no authority over them and is not acting in an official governmental capacity, given Ivey-Soto’s regular directives and backroom meetings. For example, in June, Ivey-Soto met in a closed-door session with the Torrance County Commission directing them to certify the 2022 primary post-election results despite evidence that Dominion machines were not legally certified for use.
More than a thousand pages of emails to and from Ivey-Soto as part of this county clerk list-serve were obtained by the Estancia News. Although Ivey-Soto represents that his company’s efforts are restricted to technical assistance, it was found not to be the case. As noted in Part 1, Ivey-Soto encouraged all of New Mexico’s clerks to ignore the effort of many citizens to obtain answers to questions of anomalies and vulnerabilities in their voter rolls and election system following the controversial 2020 election.
Due to the controversial nature of the 2020 General Election, rule changes, and anomalies discovered in the data, citizens filed multiple requests for public records in the summer of 2021 before the records were scheduled to be destroyed. Emails discussing and even complaining about the requests for public documents were circulated on Ivey-Soto’s “NM Clerks” list-serve. The SOS, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, even complained about it publicly – accusing the people of malicious intent in their quest for transparency.
In October 2022, Ivey-Soto circulated an email with an attached draft piece of legislation that later appeared on the Senate floor as SB 180. The draft legislation would remove all election records from being discoverable under the Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA), thus “solving” the problem of the clerks who were complaining about having to respond to IPRA requests, while at the same time, further shrouding the election system in secrecy.
Ivey-Soto does not disclose anywhere on his website or in the contract that we were able to review, that he advises or assists his paying clients in drafting legislation, but a review of his correspondence affirms this to be the case.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/02/nms-secretary-state-maggie-toulouse-oliver-paid-nm-senator-daniel-ivey-soto-nearly-1-million-taxpayer-money-county-clerk/