After four years as the state’s top law enforcement official, democratic incumbent Attorney General Raúl Torrez is running for reelection against Republican challenger Sam Kane. Torrez earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his law degree from Stanford University. He was a federal prosecutor and senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice before being elected the Bernalillo County District Attorney in 2017. He was elected New Mexico Attorney General in 2022. KUNM’s Daniel Montaño spoke with him about his proudest accomplishments so far, where he sees room for improvement, and his priorities if he does get elected to a second term.
KUNM: What do you see as the most important responsibility of the attorney general, and what would be your top priority if you were elected to a second term?
TORREZ: Well, I think obviously the top priority is upholding the Constitution and the rule of law in this country, and you know I think for a lot of my predecessors that had a very different meaning. It certainly didn't involve the type of litigation that we have found that we have found necessary during the Trump presidency, but I've filed lawsuits against that administration nearly 60 times for a variety of unconstitutional and unlawful actions on the part of the administration. We've been extremely successful on a number of high-profile cases on everything from his unlawful tariffs, but also birthright citizenship, attacks on voting and elections. But I think, in very concrete terms, for the people of New Mexico, we've recovered nearly $900 million in proposed federal funding cuts. And so, obviously, this is an unusual time in the life of this state and in this country, but the primary duty that I have to the people of this state is to protect them and to uphold the rule of law, and that's exactly what I intend to do. In terms of the other priorities that we have, I have always, as a child abuse prosecutor, I've been very focused on child welfare and well-being, and that's why we initiated the investigation into CYFD. It's also why we took Meta to court multiple times. And actually, we're the only state in the nation to take them to court for the ways in which they've endangered kids, and have been very successful in pursuing that strategy, and that's something that I can imagine us continuing to be very engaged in and leading on, in terms of the impact that big tech has on families and and communities and kids, most importantly.
KUNM: A major concern among voters is public safety. What specifically can the attorney general's office do to reduce crime? And is there anything you would do differently with a second second term?
TORREZ: Yeah, a lot of the role that we serve in the public safety space is both in the realm of advocacy — in terms of changing policy for the entire criminal justice system and for the entire state. I've been a very big advocate for victims of crime to strengthen and improve the types of constitutional guarantees and protections that they have, which is why we announced a package of legislation last week that would both better protect them throughout the criminal justice process, but also to strengthen our human trafficking laws. The penalties there have not matched in terms of the severity of the conduct, and so we're actually asking for an increase in those penalties. We have a relatively small criminal unit as compared to the number of prosecutors under my direction. When I was the DA, we had over 100. I have about half a dozen now, so we have to be very selective in the way in which we deploy those resources. But primarily, we handle complex violent crime in organized crime cases that are too big or too difficult for local jurisdictions to handle. We also take on a number of cases involving officer-involved misconduct or officer-involved shootings. We secured a conviction in Doña Ana County for the first time in 20 years of a police officer for killing someone in the course of duty, and so that's an example of the type of work that we do. I'm going to continue to be as a career prosecutor a strong advocate for right-sizing and and improving the amount of resources. We don't have enough police officers in this state. We certainly don't have enough police officers in this community. They need to have more support and they need to have more resources. But we also can't rely on them exclusively to solve a lot of the challenges that we have. We have to build out our behavioral health support services and find ways to get non-violent offenders, but people who have drug addiction. Issues and substance abuse issues out of the criminal justice system in a safe and responsible way, so that we can free up resources for police and prosecutors to really hone in on the most dangerous and organized criminals that are impacting public safety.
KUNM: You've proposed updating New Mexico's consumer protection laws to address things like data brokers, surveillance pricing, and technology companies use personal information. What specific changes would you like for lawmakers to make, and how would those changes protect ordinary consumers?
TORREZ: Yeah, so our proposal is the most sort of modern and aggressive update of a state's consumer protection laws, probably in the last 50 years of any state in this country. We have redesigned that core statute to reflect current business practices in the digital economy, which center on the harvesting of consumer data for purposes beyond the explicit disclosures that have been made to consumers, often to their detriment, right? What surveillance pricing is predicated on is using various data sets and information that are garnered from public-facing consumer portals to gather a profile of a consumer and then target that consumer based on, you know, their specific Income level, or the urgent demands of you know an emergency that has come up, where for example, if someone in the marketplace knows that someone in a family has passed away, and that that person has to travel, book a hotel room, book a flight, that they're more likely susceptible to an increase in price in a way that other consumers wouldn't be, and it's the harvesting of that kind of highly personalized data that goes to the heart of the new provisions that we've proposed for our consumer protection laws, along with substantially increased penalties to to match the scale of the economic power that a lot of these firms bring to the market. We need a lot more regulatory and litigation force in terms of pushing back against that. One of the other things we focus on is the use of commonly shared pricing software systems where different competitors are relying on a shared pricing platform in a way that actually enables price fixing without direct communication between the firms. That is also something that's going to be at the center of this new proposal. So I expect a pretty robust debate in Santa Fe around what all this really means. But the bottom line is, for New Mexicans and consumers, we are are living in a world where the concentration of corporate power has never been this extreme, and the ability of concentrated corporate power to leverage technology to the disadvantage of consumers means that we need someone in this agency who can not only craft legislative solutions but but bring about litigation to stand up for people and and and make sure everyday life is more affordable.
