'A matter of law'

Chief among Ortega’s reasons for announcing his decision over a year before the Nov. 3, 2026 election is his interest in qualified candidates having plenty of time to launch campaigns. The position is the most highly paid elected office in Taos County, and comes with weighty responsibilities.

“When I ran against a lawyer the first time, he stressed that the most important qualification for being a judge is knowing the law,” Ortega said. “I agreed that that’s an important qualification, but it’s not the most important.”

“The ethics and the character of the candidate is what’s most important,” Ortega said, adding that being a judge in one’s hometown is not easy. The trick, he said, is balancing due process with victim’s rights.

“It’s harder to be a judge in a small community,” he added. “You know a lot of people, you know a lot of history. And you have to be able to draw that line about which cases you can hear without bias or prejudice. The rule is, ‘If in doubt, get out.’”

Ortega suffered his fair share of doubters after he was appointed as a non-lawyer to the bench by Gov. Bill Richardson in January, 2006, after Judge Erminio Martinez stepped down. Ortega won the first of five consecutive four-year term elections later that year.

Ortega’s political life began as a young man attending the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He’d spent his later high school years, 1970-72, working as a photographer and the sports editor at Taos News, where he thought he’d found his calling.

“Those were in the days when we had Royal typewriters and we processed and developed our own film,” Ortega said. “I love journalism. That’s what I was going to do.”

He did become involved in communications, but on the other side of the news desk. He was on U.S. Sen. Jeff Binghaman’s team for 10 years as a speech writer and liaison dealing with constituents’ military and Internal Revenue Service cases.

In 1996, he returned to Taos to run a campaign for then-candidate for 8th Judicial District Attorney John Paternoster. The two become fast friends. After a stint as district attorney, Paternoster would go on to be appointed to the position of judge in the 8th Judicial District the same year Ortega was appointed magistrate judge.

“Judge Paternoster was my mentor. I learned a lot from him. He was a brilliant, brilliant litigator and a brilliant judge,” Ortega said. “He often said that it’s very important to treat every case individually. And no matter how hard the law may have treated someone, even if they’re incarcerated, they always have the chance to redeem themselves and start over again."

Lauren Felts-Salazar, courts manager for the 8th Judicial District, has worked with Ortega for over 14 years.

Ortega “really just cares a lot about his community” and “wants to see people succeed,” Felts-Salazar said, adding she could tell his decision not to seek reelection wasn’t an easy one.

“He’s been sitting there with a letter on his desk for a few months, and I kept saying, 'Have you taken it to the Taos News?’ He’d say ‘No, but I’ll go next week,’” she said. “I even told him, I said, ‘I think you’re reconsidering it’ — I know this has been a very hard decision for him to come to.”

Ortega said in his statement he came to the decision with “mixed emotions,” but was certain there are “other ways to contribute to making our community better and safer.”

Among the more notable cases he presided over, Ortega recalled one in particular.

“State police officers went out to the [Rio Grande Gorge] bridge and handed out criminal trespassing citations to kick 'em out of the area,” Ortega said. “They were all lined up by the side of the road. I guess almost 30 cases were prosecuted.

“I ruled that, as a matter of law, it was not the right charge, and I dismissed all the cases,” Ortega said.

Magistrate court deals with civil litigation, misdemeanors and non-felony cases, and adjudicates first-appearances in many felony cases that are ultimately bound over to district court. Ortega has presided over roughly 300 jury trials in magistrate court, many of which involved DWI charges, domestic violence and the gamut of civil cases.

Memories from his dealings with approximately 400 clients in his capacity as a longtime caseworker with the state Department of Corrections persist, as well.

“One time, the windows got shot out of my car,” Ortega said. “Well, we had a client who had served two second-degree murder terms. He was in prison for 40 years. When he came out of prison, he was probably 61.

“He could fix anything, even though he was illiterate; he was very well-known in the penitentiary because he could fix anything,” Ortega said. “When he came out of the penitentiary, he told me he was more scared now than he was in the penitentiary.

“I picked him up at the bus station when he got out, and when the windows got shot out of my car, he went to a salvage yard and replaced all the windows before the end of the day,” Ortega said.

The former inmate later reached out to Ortega to confide, “I’m in so much trouble,” then explained he was in love with a woman he’d met at church.

“I said, get her some flowers, take her out to dinner and tell her how you feel,” Ortega said. “So, he took her out — and asked her to marry him on the first date. I didn’t tell him to ask her to get married. She said yes, and they got married.”

“He said to me, ‘Look at all the years I’ve been in prison; look how I ruined my life,’” Ortega said. “Now, I’m 60-some years old, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. It’s never too late to start over. You tell those guys that come out of prison, it is never too late to start over.”

Ortega said he's never forgotten those words.

“There is nothing I have wanted more in my life to serve the people I grew up with and love and cherish beyond measure,” Ortega said. He will serve as magistrate judge until his term expires Dec. 31, 2026.