GOP nominee for governor, Mark Ronchetti’s newest ad leaves out a critical fact: newly reported court documents show that Republican prosecutors in Chaves County dropped gun charges that would’ve put felon Christopher Beltran in jail for far longer than the vehicle theft charges that initially landed him in prison.

The decision to drop 2019 gun charges came right as Chaves County District Attorney Dianna Luce lobbied state legislators to oppose stronger gun control laws that January.

“The big question in the case of Christopher Beltran is why Republicans in Chaves County looked the other way and went soft on crime, when they could have locked him up for 18 months on a felony gun charge,” said Daniel Garcia, Communications Director for the Democratic Party of New Mexico. “Ronchetti’s lies about the Beltran case are a mirage to distract from the Republican soft-on-guns policies that led to Beltran’s release prior to him committing murder. All of this shows a dangerous pattern of the GOP putting allegiance to the gun lobby above the safety of New Mexicans.”

Luce has been the District Attorney for New Mexico’s Fifth Judicial District since May 2015, when she was appointed by Republican Governor and Ronchetti mentor Susana Martinez, and previously declined to prosecute Beltran for a July 2018 domestic violence charge (Roswell Magistrate Court, Case No. M-7-VM-201800127). The charges were dropped in January 2019, the same month Luce was busy lobbying Santa Fe to protect the rights of domestic violence offenders and others to possess guns.

Other court documents reported last night by KOB-TV proved the Republican Governors Association attack ad as false when it claimed Beltran was released due to Governor Lujan Grisham’s COVID-19 public health orders.

“It was not due to the public health order, but because he served his time,” KOB-TV reported.

###