A champion for New Mexico
State’s longest-serving U.S. senator lauded for seeking bipartisan solutions
Pete Domenici, a political powerhouse who for 36 years represented New Mexico in the U.S. Senate and used his influence to help steer federal dollars to national laboratories, military bases and other facilities in his home state, died Wednesday in Albuquerque following a recent surgery. He was 85.
First elected to the Senate in 1972, Domenici became known nationally as an expert on the federal budget, taxes and energy issues. The father of a daughter who suffers from schizophrenia, Domenici also was an advocate for mental health parity in health insurance coverage.
He entered the Senate as the first Republican from New Mexico in 38 years. By the time he left Congress, he had become the state’s longest-serving U.S. senator.
Domenici, a moderate conservative, earned bipartisan praise for his grasp of the issues and his steady passion for seeking legislative solutions. “He thought his job was not necessarily to appear on news shows, but rather to be a workhorse senator who was able to persuade his colleagues of the value of what he was trying to do,” former Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told The Washington Post, “and he did it with great feeling.”
The son of Italian immigrants, Domenici was born Pietro Vichi Domenici on May 7, 1932, in Albuquerque, the only boy among six siblings. In his youth, he worked in his father’s grocery business.
In 1954, he received a teaching degree from The University of New Mexico, where he starred as a pitcher on the school’s baseball team. He also pitched one season for the Albuquerque Dukes, a farm club for the Brooklyn Dodgers at the time. He later said he had to give up his baseball aspirations because “my curve ball didn’t have enough bite.”
Domenici worked as a math teacher at Garfield Junior High School in Albuquerque before earning a law degree from Denver University in 1958. He then opened a law
office in Albuquerque.
His first foray into politics came in 1966, when he won a seat on the Albuquerque City Commission. He later became chairman of the commission, which, under the city’s old form of government, was equivalent to being mayor.
He made an unsuccessful run for governor in 1970 against Democrat Bruce King, but he never lost an election afterward.
Domenici rose to national prominence in the U.S. Senate after Republicans won control in 1980 and Republican Ronald Reagan became president. Domenici became chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
A confirmed deficit hawk, he sometimes clashed with Reagan and other GOP members of Congress over budget matters. But he earned a reputation of being able to bring together various factions to craft budget agreements.
In a documentary film about Domenici, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., praised him: “There’s no one in the Senate, or in the House of Representatives, that can make the case like Pete Domenici can, and make it as convincingly and as powerfully as he does,” Kennedy said. “And whenever he does, the U.S. Senate just responds overwhelmingly.”
Domenici failed to win positions such as majority leader, but in August 1988, The New York Times reported that he was on the short list of vice presidential contenders for George H.W. Bush. The Times wrote, “Mr. Domenici is respected among his Senate colleagues and would appeal to Western voters and to Italian-Americans and Roman Catholics like him.”
Bush eventually chose Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle for his running mate, and the Bush-Quayle ticket won the general election that year.
After his years on the Budget Committee, Domenici became chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. There, he became known as a vocal advocate for nuclear energy.
Former U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat who served 26 years in the Senate with Domenici, remembered him as a “very likeable guy who had good interactions with people.” The day after Bingaman first was elected to the Senate in 1983, Domenici called to congratulate him, Bingaman said in an interview Wednesday.
“The Republicans were running the Senate at that time,” he said. “But it was a less partisan place at that time, compared to today. We became friends.”
Bingaman was the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee when Domenici was chairman. When Democrats took over the Senate, Bingaman became chairman of the energy committee, and Domenici continued to serve as the ranking Republican member.
“We worked pretty intensely on those issues,” Bingaman said.
The two senators disagreed on many major issues, Bingaman said, naming the Iraq War, the attempt by Republicans to remove President Bill Clinton from office and President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
“But any specific projects and issues in New Mexico,” he said, “we tried to find agreement, and generally we were successful.”
He recalled working with Domenici whenever any military base in the state was threatened with closure.
New Mexico leaders from both political parties were quick to praise Domenici after learning of his death.
Bipartisanship seemed to be one of Domenici’s guiding principles. Addressing the state Legislature in 2008, he said, “We are in danger of losing our ability to move forward as a nation because of destructive, personality-driven partisan politics. Let me leave this warning with you: America’s democracy is in trouble unless we put aside the political extremes and work toward our common goals.”
The former senator was particularly respected by many state and local government leaders in New Mexico for his help in getting federal funds for local projects.
A number of buildings across the state bear his name, including the New Mexico History Museum building on Lincoln Avenue in Santa Fe, the federal courthouse in Albuquerque and a health education complex under construction at The University of New Mexico. An annual public policy conference at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces is named for him. This year’s conference opened Wednesday, the day the former senator died.
Announcing in late 2007 that he wouldn’t seek re-election, Domenici recalled that when he first ran for public office, his friends urged him not to run because they did not want to see him hurt by personal attacks.
“Obviously, I didn’t listen to them,” he said. “And I’m glad I didn’t. I have found politics to not be as harsh as my friends predicted. For the most part, it’s been just the opposite.”
Domenici said he had decided to retire from the Senate because he was suffering from frontotemporal lobar degeneration, a progressive brain disease. He said he was confident in his ability to serve the remaining 14 months of his term but didn’t want to risk impairment over an additional six years in office.
About a year later, shortly before leaving office, Domenici announced that he was no longer suffering from the condition.
At the time of his retirement, Domenici was at the center of a controversy surrounding the dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who charged that Domenici and then U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson had pushed him to bring corruption charges against Manny Aragon, a Democrat who had been state Senate majority leader, to boost Wilson in her close 2006 re-election contest with New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid.
After an investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee in 2008 admonished Domenici for “the appearance of impropriety” in a phone call to Iglesias. But the committee said it found no substantial evidence that Domenici had tried to influence an ongoing criminal investigation.
After retiring, Domenici worked as a senior fellow for a Washington, D.C., think tank called the Bipartisan Policy Center, founded in 2007 by four former senators, Republicans Howard Baker and Bob Dole and Democrats Tom Daschle and George Mitchell. It promotes bipartisan approaches to various policy issues.
As part of his work for the center, Domenici and Alice Rivlin, a former director of Office of Management and Budget under Clinton, released a much publicized plan in 2010 to reduce the national deficit. But neither Congress nor the Obama White House seriously pursued the plan.
Domenici built a strong public image as a family man, but his reputation was shaken in 2013 by the announcement that he had fathered a son out of wedlock with the much younger daughter of one of his Senate colleagues. Domenici and Michelle Laxalt — who became a lobbyist and raised their son on her own — had kept the affair a secret for about 35 years, revealing it only after they learned someone was pitching a story about it to national media outlets.
Their son, Adam Laxalt, now is the Republican attorney general of Nevada. He said in a statement Wednesday, “I am profoundly saddened by the passing of my father. He leaves behind a wonderful, talented and loving family. He was a great man who I will dearly miss.”
When Domenici made the paternity disclosure, critics pointed out that in the late 1990s, at the height of President Clinton’s sex scandal, Domenici helped start a program for school students called “Character Counts.”
Domenici moved back to New Mexico earlier this year and was appointed by State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn Jr. as a “senior adviser” to the Land Office, focusing on education issues and land and water conservation. A spokeswoman for Dunn said Domenici’s contract with the Land Office ended in June.
Domenici is survived by his wife, Nancy Domenici; three sons; six daughters; and numerous grandchildren.
A public celebration of Domenici’s life will be held at 3 p.m Saturday at Isotopes Stadium in Albuquerque, 1601 Avenida Cesar Chavez SE. The event is open to the public.
Contact Steve Terrell at 505-986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at www.santafenewmexican.com/ roundhouse_roundup.