SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Time is running out before Election Day as New Mexico election regulators push the political support group Cowboys for Trump to disclose its financial backers. The horseback-riding, New Mexico-based support group for President Donald Trump on Wednesday urged a U.S. District Court not to dismiss its lawsuit challenging state financial disclosure requirements. A trial could stretch into late 2021. The group was co-founded by Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin to support Trump on a variety of conservative themes, including gun rights, border security and opposition to abortion. The group says less-onerous federal campaign finance laws override recent New Mexico legislation aimed a greater financial transparency for independent political expenditure groups. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, says Cowboys for Trump has ignored a binding arbitration agreement that found it was a political committee, subject to state registration and financial reporting requirements. The group, also known by its C4T insignia, compared its plight in new court filings to the travails of the NAACP during the civil rights movement as Alabama sought unsuccessfully for disclosure of names and local addresses for members of the nation’s oldest civil rights group. “The NAACP showed that past release of its membership lists had exposed members to economic targeting, loss of employment, physical coercion, and other forms of hostility,” attorneys for Cowboys for Trump said...MORE
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