Republican Party of New Mexico

07/18/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/18/2026 13:10

MARKER AND ZAMORA: LUJÁN AND LEGER FERNANDEZ GOT THE PHOTO OP — 8,000 VICTIMS ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE CHECK

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 15, 2026

MARKER AND ZAMORA: LUJÁN AND LEGER FERNANDEZ GOT THE PHOTO OP - 8,000 VICTIMS ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE CHECK
Congress started the fire, Congress appropriated the money, and Congress has done nothing while FEMA burns through it on administrative costs

Albuquerque, NM - Republican U.S. Senate nominee Larry Marker and Republican CD-3 nominee Martin Zamora today jointly condemned Senator Ben Ray Luján and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez for their failure to provide meaningful oversight of the FEMA claims process for victims of the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, calling it a textbook case of Washington Democrats who take credit for writing a check and then disappear while bureaucrats cash it.

"The federal government started this fire," Marker said. "Congress appropriated $5.45 billion to make the victims whole. Four years later, nearly 8,000 New Mexicans and businesses are still waiting for their money, and hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to go to families in northern New Mexico have instead been consumed by FEMA's administrative apparatus. Ben Ray Luján has been in the United States Senate this entire time. Where has he been?"

The record of alleged corruption within the FEMA claims office tells the story of a fund that was looted from the inside while the people it was created to help waited outside. Martin Zamora was the first to call for the resignation of Jay Mitchell, the office's director, the man entrusted to deliver justice to fire victims, who was finally placed on administrative leave amid allegations he fraudulently obtained approximately $524,000 from the fund itself. Mitchell denies wrongdoing. His deputy, Jennifer Carbajal, was also placed on administrative leave after allegedly appropriating funds to her own household, including a $267,000 "smoke and ash" payout tied to a property she owned with her then-wife inside the fire's burn scar. Her then-wife, who received half of the payout, was a staffer for Teresa Leger Fernandez.

"This is as corrupt and as incompetent as it gets," Zamora said. "The federal government started the fire. Congress appropriated the money. And the people hired to distribute it allegedly stole from it. Meanwhile 8,000 families and businesses in my district are still waiting for what they're owed. The director and his deputy allegedly took nearly $1 million dollars. Nobody fired. Nobody charged. Nobody held accountable."

"These are my people," Zamora said. "The families in Mora County, in San Miguel County, in the communities along the Gallinas River who lost their homes, their land, their livelihoods-Teresa Leger Fernandez represents them in Congress. She has left them waiting while a bureaucracy has spent four years finding new ways to delay, review, and administratively consume the money that was supposed to be theirs. She has utterly failed in her duty to the people she was elected to serve."

According to reporting by the Albuquerque Journal, FEMA has distributed $3.51 billion of the $5.45 billion appropriated by Congress, leaving $1.497 billion in available funds to pay 7,974 pending claims. Those pending claims represent 22% of all claims filed, and include at least 100 businesses as well as nonprofits and community institutions. Claimants' attorneys have now been forced to seek a federal court injunction just to expedite payment-four years after the fire and with a $5 billion congressional appropriation already on the books.

Meanwhile, the available figures indicate that FEMA's administrative costs have consumed at least hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress intended for victims. The longer the process drags on, attorneys warn, the more of the remaining $1.5 billion will be eaten by the bureaucracy before it ever reaches a claimant.

"Congress appropriated $5.45 billion," Marker said. "Victims are in federal court begging a judge to make FEMA pay them. The gap between what Congress promised and what victims have actually received is exactly what oversight is for. Luján sits on committees with jurisdiction over FEMA. He could have hauled the claims office director in for testimony a year ago. He could have demanded a full accounting of every dollar spent on administrative costs. He could have put a hold on FEMA leadership until this process was fixed. He did none of it. Doing the hard work of making sure the money actually reached the people it was meant for-that's apparently not his priority."

Zamora noted that the fire itself, ignited by not one but two U.S. Forest Service burns that merged into the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, represents a fundamental breach of the federal government's responsibility to the people of northern New Mexico.

"The federal government burned down people's homes and then took four years to pay them back," Zamora said. "Teresa Leger Fernandez has been in Congress for this entire saga. She is on the House Committee on Natural Resources. She has had every opportunity to hold the Forest Service accountable for what started this fire and to hold FEMA accountable for what happened after. Instead, claimants are filing lawsuits and hiring attorneys just to collect money that Congress already appropriated. Hundreds of families in her district are hurting and still waiting for help. That is her failure as much as anyone's."

Marker and Zamora called on Luján and Leger Fernandez to immediately demand a full public accounting of all FEMA administrative expenditures from the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon claims fund, convene or demand oversight hearings on the pace and efficiency of claims payment, and use their congressional standing to guarantee that every pending claim is resolved before the administrative costs consume another dollar of the remaining $1.5 billion.

"Four years," Marker said. "The federal government started the fire. Congress wrote the check. And 8,000 New Mexicans are still waiting. Luján and Leger Fernandez should answer one question: what exactly have they been doing this whole time?"

"Northern New Mexico deserves better," Zamora said. "These communities were promised justice. They were promised accountability. They were promised their money. They are still waiting, and the people who were supposed to be fighting for them have been looking the other way."

Larry Marker is the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in New Mexico.
Martin Zamora is the Republican nominee for New Mexico's 3rd Congressional District.

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