A Republican former candidate for New Mexico’s legislature who police say claimed election fraud after his defeat has been arrested on suspicion of orchestrating recent shootings that damaged homes of Democratic elected leaders in the state, police said.
Solomon Peña, who lost his 2022 run for state House District 14, was arrested Monday by Albuquerque police, accused of paying and conspiring with four men to shoot at the homes of two state legislators and two county commissioners in December and January – and of trying to participate in at least one of the shootings, authorities said.
Though the shootings injured no one, Peña “intended to (cause) serious injury or cause death to occupants inside their homes,” an arrest warrant affidavit obtained from Albuquerque police reads.
“There is probable cause to believe that soon after his unsuccessful (political) campaign, he conspired … to commit these four shootings” at the officials’ homes, the affidavit reads.
Before the shootings, Peña – after losing the election – approached the county commissioners and at least one of the legislators at their homes, uninvited,
to allege that the election results were fraudulent, police and officials said.
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“At the end of the day, this was about a right-wing radical, an election denier who was arrested today and someone who did the worst imaginable thing you can do when you have a political disagreement, which is turn that to violence,” said Keller, a Democrat. “We know we don’t always agree with our elected officials, but that should never, ever lead to violence.”