Report from Santa Fe; Governor Toney Anaya and Fred McCaffrey

You Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the historic Carizo Lodge, providing restaurant and meeting facilities, lodging, artwork shops and ski packages at Rudo's New Mexico, Mountain Bell providing advanced telecommunication services to New Mexico homes and businesses, and the Santa Fe shirt and hotel and conference center, your friendly host in Santa Fe. I'm Ernie Mills, this is report from Santa Fe, our guest today, Governor Tony Yanaya, and longtime syndicated columnist and good friend Fred McCaffrey.

Governor Venture Openness, this is the last show of the year, 1986, you're winding down, but you're still Governor to December 31st, about a parting statement. Ernie, first of all, I'm glad that at least you among all New Mexicans recognize that I still will be Governor through December 31 midnight, but on a serious note, let me thank both you and Fred for the coverage of the administration. We don't always like what we see when it is reported that we don't always like what we read or what others may analyze it, but that's the way the system works. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank both of you for your continued analysis and sometimes not exactly the way that I would write it, but that's probably true the other way around. It has been a very productive four years in many respects, a very controversial four years and many other respects, but all said and done, it's been a very fast four years, Ernie. And as we were chatting well ago before we started the program, the time does go by very quickly, and you look back and you realize that you just can't get it done in that time frame.

But I would hope as we leave office that we've made some good impact that will be long lasting, and we hope that we've left the state in some decent shape for the next administration. And I think all of us in New Mexicans should pull together with our Democrats or Republicans, liberals, conservatives should all pull together behind Governor-elect Carothers and try to help him along in any way that we can. Certainly if there's anything that I've learned, I've learned lots of things over the last four years. If you don't have the sentiment of the general public behind you, it makes it pretty tough if not impossible to govern. And that's one area where we fell down and I think it presents any words of wisdom I would extend to the Governor-elect as well as to the general public. Hopefully they can find a way to convey, to communicate with each other in such a way that it results in general support from the public. Yeah, the pros would tell you that if you're not controversy or nothing's getting it done.

Why don't you take that? You know, I think it's very clear that those things that cause controversy and those of us who have been critical of you over those things, I don't think any one of us ever suspected that they came from anything except a desire to do something for New Mexico. I think your energy and the depth of your desire to leave the right kind of mark on the state has been clear right up till this last hour of December the 31st when you go. It's tough on your family and that's why people like we are hard to get along with. I'm sure not so much for yourself because you know us in politics you develop a little thickening of the skin but it's hard for wives and children and they suffer and I suppose if Ernie and I have any pangs, it's probably more for them than for you. The big pangs, an interesting thing, you mentioned about the shortness and time and sometimes I keep saying there is a lot of the way that Gary can write his wants to get things done, the same feeling that you had when you took office.

And I could back to the time when Ed Meacham was governor, he took over and he had a grounds for all the people that he knew he could call upon. But even when he named people to office, he did it very quietly. He came in and said, what are you going to do? And Big Ed would give his whole whole and pretty well take his time and after three months you suddenly looked into what changes made. We did it quietly. Somewhere down the line we started the need for a big press and a simple common sense thing is that everyone says, well I'm going to name Fred McAfry to this post and you say, I want to make a big announcement about it. Suddenly there are 20 other applicants who are mad and you immediately, for everyone you announced, there are 20 people out there shooting at you. I don't know why we haven't changed that and why they don't come in quietly and just bring these people in over a long period of time. But by the time any new governor gets elected, if he wants to get the publicity, he's already got a bold work of people out there that are angry with him.

And I'm not sure that you can really do it any other way because even if we tried to come in quietly and make the changes, you got two major problems. One is the longer you wait to make the changes, the more time you give those that are already entrenched to figure out how they're going to dig in their spurs and create problems for you if you try to replace them. Any other is you people in the media and you have a right to know what's going on. You're going to demand and you're going to give it the high profile anyway even if we try to do it otherwise. But it might be interesting to see how it would shake out if somebody did come in and I think that Ray Powell or some of the individuals that were running on the Republican ticket for the nomination. I think some of them would probably have taken a less visible, less high profile approach and maybe New Mexicans were entitled to that after four years of Tony and I, I don't know. One of the things that I feel sad about is always there's inevitably a certain amount of waste. I did a column about Priscilla Carter.

Here's a woman who was a receptionist and maybe some people don't think that's such an important job. But you know, she was a very valuable part and she'd been there eight years. She'd been in government. She'd been with you. I believe in the Attorney General's Office before. So she knew people and who they were and she developed that expertise in handling them and it said that that gets wasted when we get a change. But that's the way the system is. There is a tremendous amount of waste and as you indicated, Priscilla, she had worked for 12 years and in that position in the governor's office and four years in the Attorney General's office, 16 years and that kind of a position. And while she may have had the title receptionist, she was as much an administrative assistant, executive assistant as you're going to find anywhere. She really covered a lot of bases and it is a waste. But I don't know that will ever change that. She's going to work at the highway department, isn't she? She's going to go run the legal division.

Never heard a bad word about her. If someone never did criticize her, it was a case we had the media standing up. They wouldn't let them pick on Priscilla. The tendency is we forget the super people. What about it came up during the campaign? I had raised the question of where people seemed to demean politicians. But when it's your man, it's a statesman, when it's mine, it's a political hack type thing. These are the buzzwords. Fred, how many years have we heard them talk about the department of development and people keep saying we want continuity? I felt that during the last year of your administration, I think the department of development and tourism probably ran as well as it hasn't any time in my memory. To get to where Republicans work. I think the top hands are where there were Republicans under Bob Gold. We keep talking about continuity. When are we going to get it? I don't know. Maybe we fixed it so we can't have it. I don't know. If so, that's humanly very wasteful. And the citizens lose because of it.

Are you going to go off and lick your wounds? I especially want to know you're going to stay active in the Democratic Party. You have been for many years. You and I first worked at Joe Montoya campaign many years ago. You had, I think anybody who would say this, the best organized run for governor that I've ever seen. You've got an expertise that the party seems to be to need. Are you mad at them? Are they mad at you? Or are you going to say here it is? For right now, I'm going to take a few days at least, hopefully in terms of my family's point of view, hopefully a few months if not a few years and just kind of get away from it all. I like politics. You know that and it's in my blood and it's going to be almost impossible for me to pull away from politics all together. And I'll always be a Democrat. I'm not going to forsake the party.

But when we talk about the Democratic Party, Fred, I've never been able to find this Democratic Party, this animal in the state of New Mexico. As you know, I've always been perceived as being on the outside until I became the Democratic nominee for governor four years ago and then you do become the party. In your Mexico, in my judgment, the only Democratic Party we have is every four years when we have a gubernatorial election, the Democratic nominee then becomes the Democratic Party, his machinery, his organization. And then after the elections, it's gone. If I'm to be involved in the Democratic Party, either voluntarily or involuntarily, if I'm to be involved, it would probably be only from the standpoint of if I should ever choose to run again to try to pull back together those same kind of organizers we had before. Or if somebody that catches my imagination runs for office and would want my support, I would try to become involved from that point of view. But I don't foresee myself being involved with the party hierarchy in the state right now trying to sit down and scheme on how we're going to make this a productive effort because I think that would be counterproductive. I think that my views, my way of running campaigns, my way of running government are diametrically opposed to most of those that are in the hierarchy in the Democratic Party right now. And I just don't think it would be very productive at all.

I think you're going to see that the state Democratic Party in my judgment just kind of continue to deteriorate, really not make many significant inroads over the next four years. In the Democratic Party here. In the Democratic Party in New Mexico? I, conversely, you said the governor's campaign, which virtually was a landslide in Mexico, you know, 10 votes is almost a landslide. But on the other side of the coin, I thought the Ray Powell campaign for governor was one of the worst I've seen. Probably the closest to that I'd seen as far as a badly run campaign was the Gene Lus campaign against Dave Cargo. There just was a complete lack of communication within the party members as to what was going on. And that's when Cargo beat Luskin almost against insurmountable odds. But this time there was absolutely no organization. The Democrat Party never got organized this time. And for a long period, the state organization just wasn't communicating with the Powell people at all.

And you know, the irony was that the New Mexico Democratic Party after your election, after that year was a model. The National Committee came out here to Santa Fe to meet and they talked about the New Mexico plan. Nick Franklin was going around talking to other state organizations because of the success that the party had. And then for it within four years to be down to where it probably could serve as a model and just the option. Very ironic. Let me let me give you an interesting point that the Sydney city here talking about it that you might want to watch as as media personalities over the next four years. Part of the problem with the Democratic Party. Once we did put it together four years ago. And then it just kind of fell apart after we came to office. Part of it was because we didn't set up a permanent machinery to keep it going. But part of it was because we were expected and every governor is expected to then try to bring it in basically into the administration or to the governor's office at least and try to nourish it along from the governor's office.

I felt very uncomfortable in doing that and consequently didn't do very much of it. But then also all the innuendos allegations, the investigations and ultimately the Johnson Troutman conviction on the $2,000 alleged bribe or not alleged that we're convicted of it. All of that, all of those investigations and certainly force me as a person and as a governor to say, hey, I'm shoving anything political. I'm not even going to talk about it. That helped undermine the Democratic Party, whether that was done intentionally or not from the other side of that speculation. But the point I'm getting to is that it might be interesting to note how the Republicans now utilize the party machinery in connection with government. How much of that should be tolerated? How much of it is improper? I understand, for example, if they're already looking at having a fairly large fundraiser on an auguration day.

And I don't know if it's true or not, somebody suggested that it's going to be a $1,000 person fundraiser somewhere around the inauguration ceremonies. How far do you take that? Certainly they're entitled. The Republicans got the office. They're entitled to make a lot of appointments from a governing point of view. But where do you take the party machinery over and they've got a good party machinery? How do they mesh those two and how much of it can you really tolerate? I'm going to be watching see how you all report that. There's another aspect that I think we will be keeping our eye on. And that is, they're coming in after virtually 20 years in the desert. They're hungry for those opportunities that they have not had. And it will be interesting to see whether they use wisdom and restrain themselves a little bit on whether they simply go all out. Because they've got debts to pay. The Democratic Party still has debts to pay. Those are tough.

If the politicians, and when I say the politicians, I include myself, but the politicians on the outside, not inside government. If the politicians and the heavy contributors would leave Gary Carruthers alone and not put the pressure on him and let him run government and do what he thinks he needs to do, the end result will probably be a lot of Republicans brought into the administration. A lot of those debts paid off in a loose sense of the word and with good government coming out. But if they put the heavy pressure on him up front and make him deliver appointments that he wouldn't otherwise make or contracts that he otherwise wouldn't enter into, then he's going to be damaged. The Republican Party is going to be damaged. And the state is going to be hurt. I hope the right people will listen to you. And they seldom listen to the middle. You and I have said, when we had during campaigns, Fred will put out a column, I'll put out my TV and radio shows. And when you're not attacking the candidate, or you're not saying beautiful things about them, they ignore the middle part.

The other way to, you know, someone calls them, I'm saying, you've got to get a copy of that, showing cream. You know, I'm a Cadbury said something kind and you find what really went wrong. You've got to apologize to your friends. You know, I'm sorry. Fred said something nice about me, but I had nothing to do with it. On maintaining control, I found, with yourself, for example, Governor comes in, you assume, you know what your priorities are. And one of your top ones was development and tourism. See, that's my priority. And as they say, all of a sudden, like you had the, there's no question about it, the Justice Department, you know, within the state, you know, started after you. And suddenly you didn't have the time for all the things. That stuff is out of a governor's control pretty much. And I don't see any steps being taken for governors to cut down on their obligations, whether it be taking pictures, handing out proclamations. But you really don't, I always say to get blindsided. You go in and say, these are my top five priorities. You've done it. You said that would be in Fred's it. These are the priorities.

You hold second comings on this step, even though in your own people, this is what I want. So they'll understand. And then you lose the control. It's taken out of your hand. You get blindsided by something you never expected. It's such arms like, you know, you, you said, and then I think, Gary Carruthers has said, too, I'd like to go around and visit all the agencies. I remember Jerry Apidoccasin, there are, that turns out once you're there to be a virtual impossibility. Or Ernie says, when he first started covering Santa Fe, which is shortly after the first world war, you could go to all the agencies, you know, once a week. Right right here. Visiting. Is it every state agency in one, we used to do it here. Port of entry was across the street. This building wasn't here. We had the old capital building except for the highway department. But everything else was right when you just drop in every day and visit once a week. You'd see every agency that you can't do that. It would be great if you could, but it is impossible, even at the back end of it for the past month. I have been pledging to every department that I'm going to come over and bid a due and say thanks to all employees. I have made it to three departments and I haven't made it out of Santa Fe yet.

We had our governor service centers that are now being shut down in our shutdown. And I don't think the Gary Corrothers is going to reopen them. We had pledged that we were going to go to Los Cruces and spend time there once a month, go to Albuquerque and spend time once a month. You just can't do it. You can, but then something else suffers and you got to make, make some judgments. It says like the open office hours. We've had people try that year after year and it becomes a flat out waste of time after a while. You'll see the same faces or people that you know you probably shouldn't be seeing. It's a good PR effort. It sends out a message. You need to be in contact with the people. It sends out a message that I'm going to talk to the ordinary person. You know, you come on in, but in terms of productivity, it's a zero. Lopez says that somewhere along the line, he wrote you a memo in which he said the governor should not spend more than a third of his time in the office. And you know, again, that's theoretically and from a point of view of administration and all that's probably true, but you get up there and you can't get out.

Yet Dan Lopez would be the first to admit that if I were to address and spend time on every problem that he personally wants to discuss with me because he's had a DFA. He would take up that entire one third and there'd be no time left for anybody else. Maybe that's what Dan did. What about some of your programs like the, and I obviously got a copy of the foreign trade missions. You believe in it? I believe in it. Over a long, long period of time. Have you discussed with the incoming governor, those programs are such to see what might be kept. I say, at this point, I always say salvage because Fred and I have offices lined with reports that go back for years and years, the FANTAS report. People coming out of Chicago telling us they love being in the Mexico. That's why they took on that one sales job. And then they want us to be like Chicago three weeks and they want us to be like Chicago. What happens to those? It comes back to the question you asked while ago that I didn't respond to in terms of what about continuity specifically at the Economic Development Department.

We always look at it in my judgment in reverse. We always look at how about continuity at the University of New Mexico or continuity at the Economic Development Department or continuity at the Tax and Revenue Department. But until this last election, we never looked at it from the standpoint of what about continuity at the top? Because in the governor's office, until you have continuity in the governor's office, the rest of it is academic. You're not going to have continuity. And even if you have continuity in the governor's office, I've done guarantee continuity down below, but that's the only way you're going to get there. Some of those programs, despite the change of administration or change of any administration. Some of those programs continue just because of their own weight and their own merits. The international trade activities, I think, will be revived in the Carothers Administration and pursued more aggressively than one would imagine up front. It was not a priority with him and his campaign. In fact, a couple of times I heard some comments where he was critical of the, quote, junkets that were taken overseas. But we've seen a lot of results already. We've gone from a couple of hands full of companies in New Mexico four years ago that had international contacts to now over 300 companies that are doing business overseas or in foreign countries.

And that's going to continue to multiply just on its own. And I think that hopefully the next administration will pick upon it because that is, it's got some negatives as well, but that is open for us. It's wide open. We can take advantage of it to whatever extent we want to. Disadvantages that you get too heavily dependent upon foreign investments, they're certainly interested in creating some jobs here if it means money for them. But their main interest overseas is how much money can we take back home. So you got to be careful, you got to balance it off, but it's great for the new markets, it's great for our products, it's great for new industries here, it's great for tourism, tourism has vastly improved as a result of the foreign trips in the last couple of years. It's an area that I think will be continued just on its own, but I think once the next administration recognizes the golden goose that is there, I think they'll go for it.

Have you and he been able to sit down and talk as much as you plan to, again it's hard, I'm sure for both of you. It's the governor and I have planned to. I said, I'm here and I have been here. We have not gotten together as much as I think we left the impression that the first day that we came out for the photo opportunity and so on. But we have sat down a number of times more recently and that's been the only time that we've really been able to spend extended period of time. We coincidentally, and it wasn't planned, we accidentally bumped into each other at the airport in Washington, DC. We had both gotten bumped off of our respective planes, that wound up being put together on the same flight and as a result, we flew back together, sat together and had about four, four and a half, five hours to visit and covered a lot of ground in. And then more recently, when you get together with all the ex-governors and myself, we had an opportunity visit a little bit, but not really, that was more of a social setting than really a business.

In short, no, we haven't spent a lot of time. Probably faded enough to, but I don't know if people remember how difficult your particular transition was. I mean, peculiar set of circumstances there. It looks like the state is in good financial condition, all of the year in which you are running and about the day on which the people go to the polls. We suddenly are told that the bottom has fallen out and there is no money. And that transition was a unique one because where I'm sure you had a lot of plans in mind and were homing in on some targets, suddenly you find. You got this to start off with as kicking the head of a drop in revenues that was frightening then. Even the day that the voters were going to the polls, they waited till the day after the voters went to the polls to let us know.

It was a mumbling, I understand, whether they had kept the secret enough. It was a difficult transition from other points of view as well. And I share much of the responsibility too. I didn't feel any too connolly towards the administration that was in place and the fact that they were Democrats and I was a Democrat and there was some animosity there made it even more difficult and awkward to work while there may not be the greatest of feelings between the incoming administration and the current administration. At least we recognize we were starting from opposite sides of the political fence and reached out to try to find some middle ground there to make it a good transition. We've succeeded in doing that. Certainly the contacts at the agency levels has been excellent. We've provided them with office space. We've opened up our records. We've turned over briefing papers. We've given them the run of the place. They have access to anything they want. While Gary and I personally maybe have not as met as often as both of he and I would have thought, certainly all the staff have. His cabinet appointees have and there's been a tremendous amount of communication.

Obviously different approaches or different philosophies. But in terms of the transition efforts, I think it's as open and as smooth as anybody could hope for when you're given a power. I know I couldn't run for re-election and if I could have, I may have gotten beat but I know I couldn't run. I know I wasn't on the ticket. I know I didn't get elected. But I hate to walk out January 1, I'll be honest with you. It's fun. I had that constantly up here. Once they get their feet wet, they won't stay with it. I think I can say on behalf of most all the media people who have been extremely accessible to us. There are painful periods always. You get along well and suddenly car shots as we see them and you just know when they catch it in the morning it's got to be painful when you're taking that cup of coffee. One time I told the governor I'd work for, I said cut the column out of the paper before you read it. It's much better for your stomach. But on behalf of all of us, we want to wish you well Elaine, the family. It's been an interesting four years and I think I share with Fred the feeling that we hope we're going to be around a bit.

Fred, by all means I would hope that you would keep your interest and not let your spirit die off and personally as of this moment I am sure we will be hearing from you again. Thank you Fred. Thank you Ernie for all of the past courtesies and I look forward to visiting with you again wherever it may be and whatever capacity and I thank you both. The one thing we said at this time of the year we always feel a little impathy for the outgoing governor and then we have to tell the new one the only power we have is we're going to be around when you're gone. And they ought to listen. I'm Ernie Vose, I'd like to thank our guest columnist Fred McCaffrey, long time friend for being with us and Governor Tony Gennaya, who still will be governor until December 31st at midnight. Thank you for being with us and report from Santa Fe.

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the historic Corizo Lodge, providing restaurant and meeting facilities, lodging, artwork shops and ski packages at Rudoso New Mexico. Mountain Bell, providing advanced telecommunication services to New Mexico homes and businesses and the Santa Fe shirt and hotel and conference center, your friendly host in Santa Fe. Music