Hearing reveals New Mexico Sen. Mimi Stewart screamed at Capitol staffer, called her ‘stupid’

State Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart unleashed a “verbal attack” on a legislative employee who claims the prominent Albuquerque Democrat screamed at her and then called her stupid, according to testimony provided Friday to a subcommittee of the interim Legislative Ethics Committee.

Special counsel Lorna Wiggins, who conducted the investigation into a harassment complaint that has thrust Stewart into an embarrassing predicament, told the subcommittee the incident occurred during the 60-day session earlier this year.

The incident left the employee, identified in the proceeding as Michelle Jaschke, who works as the Legislative Council Service’s capital outlay programs coordinator, in mental and physical anguish.

“The legislators’ anti-harassment policy provides that it’s the policy of the Legislature that all persons who work for the Legislature be able to do so in an environment in which they are treated with dignity and respect and free from all forms of harassment or discrimination,” Wiggins told the subcommittee, which concluded the public hearing by going into a closed executive session to deliberate.

“The harassment portion of the policy doesn’t limit the conduct to only discrimination that is based on someone’s protected characteristic,” added Wiggins, a labor and employment lawyer with Albuquerque-based Wiggins, Williams & Wesenberg P.C. “Instead, the policy in place provides that harassment — and I am quoting now — generally involves conduct, comment or display that a reasonable person would find insulting, intimidating, humiliating, hurtful, demeaning, degrading or that causes offense, discomfort or personal humiliation or embarrassment to a person or persons.”

Wiggins said she concluded Stewart’s conduct “would fall within the anti-harassment policy.”

‘She was downright rude’

Jaschke emailed Stewart and her secretary after 5 p.m. Feb. 27, “stating that she had not yet received Sen. Stewart’s capital outlay funding sheet and asking if the senator or her staff needed anything additional from her office to complete the sheet.”

Jaschke said she almost immediately received what she deemed a “screaming email” from Stewart in all capital letters, stating Stewart had turned in the sheet the day before, Wiggins said.

“Moments later, [Jaschke] stated she received a call from Sen. Stewart screaming at her, using what she described as pejorative language, including calling her stupid for not knowing that the sheet had already been turned in,” she…