In the afternoon on the first Sunday in December Adriann Barboa, an elected commissioner of Bernalillo county near Albuquerque in New Mexico, had just come home from Christmas shopping. Suddenly several shots were fired through the window and front door of his house.
Four days later there was another gun attack, this time on the home of New Mexico state representative Javier Martinez.
A third shooting took place on December 11th, when more than a dozen shots were fired at the home of another Bernalillo commissioner, Debbie O’Malley.
On January 3rd there was another burst of gunfire at the property of a politician when a dozen rounds were fired shortly after midnight at the home of state senator Linda Lopez in Southwest Albuquerque. She subsequently said that three bullets went through her daughter’s bedroom as the 10-year-old slept.
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In each of the attacks, while there was damage to walls and doors of buildings, no injuries were reported.
The four politicians are all Democrats and Albuquerque police said this week they were all directly targeted in the attacks.
At a dramatic press conference police said the suspect was a Republican candidate who had unsuccessfully run for a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives in November.
Chief Harold Medina of the Albuquerque police department said the former candidate, Solomon Peña, was “the mastermind” behind a conspiracy in which four other men were paid to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators. He said Mr Peña had been taken into custody by a police Swat team on Monday.
Mr Peña (39) lost the election on November 8th in a landslide to an incumbent Democrat, Miguel Garcia.
Several days later Mr Peña on Twitter expressed support for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and said he had not conceded in his own election. Mr Trump has never accepted that he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Police said in a statement that Mr Peña had paid four men cash and “sent text messages with addresses where he wanted them to shoot at the homes”. They said Mr Peña accompanied the men to the house of Ms Lopez on January 3rd and “attempted to shoot”, but the automatic rifle he was using malfunctioned.
They said bullet casings found at Ms Lopez’s home matched a handgun that had been confiscated at a traffic stop less than an hour after the shooting. The driver of the car, they said, was the subject of an unrelated felony arrest warrant. The car, they said, was registered to Mr Peña.
Police said Mr Peña visited at least three Bernalillo county commissioners and Ms Lopez, the state senator, at their homes in November after he lost his election.
A spokesman for the Albuquerque police department, Gilbert Gallegos said: “He had complaints about his election, felt it was rigged.”
“He approached all of these commissioners and the senator at their home with paperwork claiming there was fraud involved in those elections.”
Mr Gallegos said the politicians concerned were “puzzled and surprised” by the accusations, and that one confrontation led to “quite an argument”. The shootings occurred shortly afterward, Mr. Gallegos said.
“That kind of suggests why they were targeted, perhaps,” he added.
Albuquerque mayor Tim Keller said that the city’s police department had “essentially discovered what we had all feared and what we had suspected – that these shootings were indeed politically motivated.
“They were dangerous attacks not only to these individuals ... but, fundamentally, also to democracy.”
Even before the November election Mr Peña’s run for office had attracted controversy. Some time before polling day his opponent had asked a court in New Mexico to bar Mr Peña from appearing on the ballot because of previous criminal convictions.
The court ruled in Mr Peña’s favour and found unconstitutional a New Mexico law that prohibited convicted criminals from holding office unless they were pardoned by the governor.
Mr Peña served nearly seven years in prison after being convicted in 2008 on burglary charges.
