By Amanda Martinez
Special to the SUN

The race for District 1 commissioner in Rio Arriba County is filled with familiar faces.

Two-term commissioner Barney Trujillo, 45, and his successor, James Martinez, AGE, will face off against incumbent Brandon Bustos, 26, when early voting begins May 5.

Trujillo’s return to Rio Arriba County politics comes following a conviction of political corruption, after he was found guilty of state procurement code violations in 2021. One of his opponent presents as his opposite. Martinez is an ordained pastor at the Rock Christian Fellowship, a speech pathologist and a veteran Española School District employee.

Trujillo and Martinez share similar concerns over county finances and the unique issues their would-be constituents face in rural communities. Both candidates are from Chimayó.

Bustos was the youngest-ever elected commissioner in county history and is a current Española Public Schools board member and hails from Fairview. He’s also the incumbent a current commission chair. He did not return a telephone call or email requesting an interview for this report.

Martinez said he is focusing on learning about the needs of the individual communities in his district, while also concentrating on their shared problems.

It’s not one size fits all, he said.

“Rio Arriba is unique in its population and every community has different needs and different priorities,” Martinez said in a telephone interview. “And every community has different issues that matter most to them.”

People in Cordova, Truchas and Ojo Sarco are concerned about access to natural gas, he said, while people in Chimayó want to talk about building a new post office.

Martinez also wants to go back and finish capital projects that were started during his first term, including a new nursing home, after the only one in Española closed unexpectedly in 2018.

“During my first term, we were able to secure land for the nursing home,” he said. “We were able to secure land for the recreation center and we did multiple road projects. However, we did not complete those projects during my first term.”

Trujillo is also focused on capital projects, and cites Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s recent veto to fund a study on the creation of a lowrider museum in Rio Arriba County. He sees it as an opportunity to build something bigger.

On his website, he has images of an envisioned regional recreation center where there could be performances, community events and the museum.

“Combine a lowrider museum with a multicultural event center where we could celebrate our lowriders, celebrate our artists and celebrate our New Mexico music,” he said.

Trujillo also wants to focus on maintenance.

He is concerned about acequias and land grants and wants to create a long-term improvement plan implemented throughout the county.

“I attended a lot of meetings, and the acequias right now are completely underfunded,” he said. I think one of my biggest priorities would be to bring in a person that’s actually going to work with the acequias and with the land grants, that we can bring on full-time.”

Finances

There were 10 findings in the county’s 2025 audit, including multiple repeated issues.

According to the document, the county has failed to implement adequate processes and internal control for procurement; has had to send back more than $100,000 to grantors due to improper grants management; has had multiple instances of bank reconciliation discrepancies and more.

“The fiscal integrity of our county is no longer,” Trujillo said. “In reality, there are so many things that are wrong and I see so much potential where we could grow.”

The county is very different compared to when he left office four years ago, Martinez said.

“We had solid audit reports and we had a balanced budget and a surplus,” he said. “Not only that, we were able to approve one of the largest pay increases for all our county employees.”

Legal Issues

Trujillo was convicted in 2021 of violating the state’s procurement code, a fourth degree felony conviction.

The charges stemmed from an in-kind donation of campaign signs he made to Yolanda Salazar’s 2015 Española Public Schools Board campaign.

According to court documents, the donation totaled more than $250. Trujillo then entered into a marketing contract worth more than $50,000 with the school district in 2016, but failed to list the donation on the campaign contribution disclosure form.

The investigation of the case led to a raid on Trujillo’s home, where law enforcement officers were seen removing boxes of evidence.

A grand jury originally indicted Trujillo on three additional counts of unlawful interest in a public contract, but those charges were dropped. The school board later canceled Trujillo’s contract and Salazar resigned.

Trujillo was facing up to 18 months in jail. After a bench trial, then-First Judicial District Court judge Mary Marlowe Summer instead sentenced him to 18 months of unsupervised probation.

Despite this, Trujillo said he has been approached by many people and asked to run.

“All this turmoil, all these things that happened were literally over $250,” he said. “OK, this happened. It was a piece of paper that was filled out incorrectly. Although I feel that it was politically motivated at the time with everything that was going on. I’m taking full responsibility because what I think is, I should have gotten better advice in filling out that document, and I should have seeked out maybe legal council to figure out that document.”

Bustos has had his own legal troubles.

According to the police report, in 2024, he was charged for failing to give immediate notice of a vehicular accident resulting in injury, death or property damage of more than $500. He was also charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving damage to a vehicle.

The Española/Rio Arriba County E-911 Center received an alert that an iPhone had detected a crash near Cordova, the police report states. The day after the accident, Bustos reported that his truck was stolen while he was camping. A law enforcement officer then confronted him with the information about the iPhone crash alert and he then admitted to crashing his own vehicle.

The charges were later dropped.

Subtitle for This Block

Title for This Block

Text for This Block