Letitia Montoya Announces Bid for Santa Fe County Clerk

Democrat Letitia Montoya released the following statement last week announcing her candidacy for Santa Fe County Clerk:

Today I am announcing my candidacy for the office of Santa Fe County Clerk.  Being born with dyslexia has forced me to be creative in my ideas. This way of thinking has allowed me to be successful at whatever task I focus my attention on.   I have no limitations and I am a hard worker. I enjoy learning, am very organized and detail-oriented. When it comes to being dedicated to work I put myself into my job 100 percent. I will use these skills to organize and reenergize the Santa Fe County Clerk’s office. 

Throughout my years of working and public service, I worked my way up the ladder from a City of Santa Fe Life Guard/Swimming instructor to Chief Operation Officer for Assure Financial. I always advocated for workers’ rights and compensation increases. I encouraged promotions of women and minorities into management level positions.

I have a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science and a Masters of Arts in Education Youth at Risk the Leadership Strand. I have co-owned a Financial Services company for over 15 years. I am currently on the American Cancer Society Committee (I am a survivor of cancer) and on the Board for Big Brothers Big Sisters. I was Secretary of the New Mexico State Democratic Party for two terms, and currently a State Central member for my fourth term and two time National Delegate.

In the recent 2010 General Election our voter turnout was fewer than 50 percent. We need new ideas to get people out to vote. Within Santa Fe County I would like to focus on three areas. Update the County Clerk’s office by going paper free using electronic filing and upgrading the computer system. This would provide significant savings and better customer service to taxpayers. Additionally, the County Clerk website will undergo major upgrades, providing significant amounts of information to my external customers (voters) and a high level of transparency and accountability to the public.

Next, I would like to hire a full time grant writer to start working on finding funds for pilot projects. I am going to break the county into 16 areas and have a mobile vehicle that will have an optical scanner in it with security. This vehicle will be used for 28 days of early voting. It will be taken into the rural areas and the high dense areas (example grocery stores). We will track and analyze to see if this program works. It’s time to give voting back to the people and stop making it more complex.

The third thing is to start educating our voters. By breaking the county into 16 areas I would like to start educational programs. It is time to create a simple brochure that goes over the amendments and have community meetings to explain the amendments to the voters for the general elections. (This idea I got from Tesuque Pueblo.) Also, start creating an open communication with the Public School system to talk to the children about how important it is to get signed up to vote when they turn eighteen.

I ask for your Vote and Support for the success of my campaign. If you would like to make a donation you can send a check to PO Box 711, Santa Fe NM 87501, or if you would like to volunteer please contact me at (505) 983-8521, email   LetitiaMontoyaforSFCountyClerk@gmail.com. I would appreciate any help you could give me and just your vote is very important to me. Thank you very much for giving me the time to introduce myself to you.

In the past, Letitia Montoya launched several unsuccessful runs for Secretary of State and State Senator. She worked for the recent reelection campaign of incumbent Secretary of State Mary Herrera, who was defeated by Republican Dianna Duran, and also ran for Chair of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, losing to incumbent Javier Martinez.

So far, the only other declared candidate in the Democratic primary for Santa Fe County Clerk is Tara Lujan.

Current Santa Fe County Clark, Democrat Valerie Espinoza, is serving out her second term and cannot run again for the post. She announced in February that she intends to run for the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission in District 3, where Jerome Block Jr. is serving his first term and has run into ethics problems.