Sen. Domenici

It's unlikely there we will be another, but the annual Domenici Policy Conference at NMSU had a good 10 year run:

The Domenici Public Policy Conference will take a break in 2019, per an announcement by NMSU. The conference, inaugurated by the university's Domenici Institute in 2008, brought policy experts, scholars, elected officials past and present, cabinet officers, military leaders and other figures of note to Las Cruces to engage with students and the public over two days. The institute and the conference were both founded by the late U.S. Senator from New Mexico, Pete V. Domenici, whose death in 2017 was announced on the opening day of that year's conference.

Senator Pete Domenici was the state's longest serving US Senator--1973-2009. How will he remembered? Well, a completely objective rendering won't be possible for another 20 years or so when a new generation will take a look, rather than those who knew him, covered him and/or worked with him.

Despite his national standing on budget matters--he was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee-- we would argue that future historians might be more attracted to Domenici's skill in navigating the Congress from the middle and appealing to both Democrats and R's on a variety of policy. Also, his unprecedented effectiveness in bringing federal money and jobs to New Mexico may make for a case study for other small state senators.

Of course, the personal scandal in which he fathered a child out of wedlock with a lobbyist who was the daughter of another senator and kept it secret for decades will be writ large in those future history texts. Then there was the US attorney scandal where Domenici and the R's sought to politicize the NM US Attorney's office. He was admonished for it be the Senate Ethics Committee in 2008.

A balance will eventually emerge that will place the aforementioned in its appropriate context. One thing is certain: in the hands of a talented writer a history of Domenici would be a book of interest for New Mexicans now and of the future.

FINAL MALOOF CONNECTION

In this space last Friday we remembered the political and economic power once wielded by the Maloff family and how they have since disengaged from the state. A reader sent news of one of the last connections the family has here. He reports the Maloof ABQ home in the Altura Park neighborhood is now for sale. The asking price for the 7,786 square foot mansion built in 1971 is $1.150 million.

This is the home of New Mexico politics.

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2019