Convicted ballot harvester, Gloria Torres, has been appointed as the new Vice Mayor of San Luis, Arizona.
Torres, who was appointed during the regular city council meeting on December 13, pleaded guilty to ballot abuse in June 2023.
Torres and Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga-Mayorquin a/k/a Nadia Buchanan were indicted in October 2022, on two Class 6 felonies of conspiracy and ballot abuse stemming from a two-year long investigation by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office with assistance from the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office.
The ballot harvesting activities were exposed by two Yuma County men, David Lara, and Gary Garcia Snyder, through hidden video surveillance outside a San Luis polling station in July 2020. Former San Luis mayor Guillermina Fuentes and local resident Alma Yadira Juarez were convicted in 2022 in part based on the video evidence.
Council Member Matias Rosales, a candidate for the Arizona House of Representative, quickly seconded former Vice Mayor Luis E. Cabrera’s recommendation to appoint Torres as Vice Mayor. Torres’ appointment was approved on a 4-3 vote of the Council.
Rosales is hoping to unseat the popular Republican House incumbent, Michele Peña.
Torres has been a source of controversy for years, say her critics, since first being elected to the San Luis City Council in 2000.
While Torres served on the Gadsden Elementary School District #32 Governing Board, the Arizona Auditor General’s May 2020 performance audit found the District “paid employees for time not worked, limited public access to some Governing Board (Board) meetings and wasted $65,000 on unnecessary travel, and lacked oversight of its transportation program.”
In April 2023, Arizona State House Chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Representative Matt Gress, and the House Education Chairwoman Representative Beverly Pingerelli questioned why the District had not corrected “several glaring accountability features which directly led to previous fraud in the district.”
The two Representatives noted that the failure of the district leadership allowed an employee to steal roughly $8,000.
The employee was eventually caught and sentenced to three years’ probation.
Torres’ guilty plea to ballot abuse resulted in probation as well. Torres was placed on twenty-four months of “supervised probation in accordance with the formal judgment and had to report to Adult Probation on the day of her sentencing.
Garcia Snyder, who is running for the Arizona House of Representatives in Legislative District 25, said, “I am both outraged and disappointed that a convicted ballot abuser has been elevated to this leadership position. The fact that a majority of the Council appears to have so little regard for our laws is an insult to residents, particularly in the Latino community. We are tired of this type of corruption and the Democrats so blatantly parading it in our faces.”
“Promoting a convicted ballot harvester, who has played a key role in the keeping the Democrats’ corrupt grip on our Latino communities, has to be a wakeup call for the Hispanic community in San Luis and surrounding areas,” said Garcia Snyder.
“We are fed up with these hijinks and low standards. I am seeing my fellow Latinos migrating towards conservatives like me who hold high standards, share their values and their languages. Salva tu familia, tu Dinero, tu opportunidades y mas importante el sueno Americano vota con el partido Conservador “El Real partido del Hispano,” concluded Garcia Snyder.
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