WATCH: Ben Ray Luján’s PAC hypocrisy

On Monday, Rep. Ben Ray Luján, member of Congress for New Mexico’s Third District and 2020 Democrat U.S. Senate nominee, tweeted a bizarre rant against his Republican opponent, Mark Ronchetti, for getting outside help from political action committees (PACs). 

Luján wrote, “Out-of-state super PACs backing @MarkRonchettiNM have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a week attacking my campaign. They know my loyalties lie with New Mexicans — and my votes will never be for sale. #nmpol” 

However, Luján fails to point out how much help he has gotten from out-of-state donors and political action committees, taking $996,019 so far from PACs, according to data compiled from OpenSecrets.org. Ronchetti has taken $0 from PACs.

As well, a bulk of Luján’s donations come from out-of-state, taking 74.48% from out-of-state donors amounting to over $3,616,944 compared to the 25.52% or $1,239,421 in donations from inside New Mexico.

In previous election years, such as in 2018, Ben Ray Luján took 59.66% of his contributions from out-of-state, with 66.85% of those being from outside of his district. In 2018, he took $1,341,810 from PACs, or 68.81% of his total funds raised.

In May 2019, Luján announced that his “campaign for the U.S. Senate [would] not accept corporate PAC (political action committee) money.” He took millions from these “corporate” PACs in his previous runs for Congress. However, He will still take funds from issue-based PACs, such as ideological “one-issue” groups like Planned Parenthood, labor unions, gun-grabbing groups, and a slew of others, just not anything from a “corporation.”

Piñon Post rates Luján’s statement regarding Ronchetti misleading because Ronchetti has taken $0 from PACs, while Luján has taken nearly $1 million from political action committees for years while in Congress.