Report from Santa Fe; Fabian Chavez

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico. An organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Today we have a fabulous guest, literally, because his name is Fabulous Fabian Chavez. Welcome to the show. How's it going to be here again? Well, your life in politics and in New Mexico is so extraordinary that I must admit upfront we're barely going to be able to scratch the surface of it in half an hour. But we'll try. We'll try. We'll try. I just want to show two pictures that kind of bookmark your career because this one tell us a little about it. Oh, that's my wife, Coral Jean, and I, in 1951, I was a member of the State House of Representatives, 26 years old, the first official position I ever held with the state. And Ta-da, fast forward, 50 years. Exactly, 50 years later. That's with Senator Jeff

Benguin and Coral Jean and I again. And that was in the recognition banquet at the here in Santa Fe for the, well, when they established its special chair, my name at the Medical School of the University of Mexico for the efforts I didn't founding it in 1961. And so we'll do another picture of that. Tell us about that. Who, that's, that's a celebration that I was just talked about with some of the nicest people there. Very wonderful bipartisan recognition of the work I've done over lifetime, more specifically the medical school in that case, with both Senator Pete Domenici and Senator Jeff Benguin, Republican Democrat and old friends, the course Bruce King, lifelong friend. And we were there, too. Oh, you were there. Everyone was there. It was wonderful. It was wonderful banquet, wonderful recognition. You know, it was kind of nice to be alive and have somebody say, thank you. Yes. Yes. They're waiting till you die, the name of building. Yes, exactly, exactly. But in 1961, you initiated the funding for the University of New Mexico Medical Center. That's correct.

And so they celebrated their 40th anniversary. And they thank you by naming the Fabian Chavez Endowed Chair for Population Health Science. It says for for population health research for ailments that are peculiar to the New Mexico population mix. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, congratulations. And thank you. You're welcome. So I mean, the school has gone away beyond our dreams when Governor Jack Campbell and I, and he was the main pusher for it on the house side. And he was a governor that finally signed the bill, making it into four years school. And it was a bipartisan effort. In 1961, it was Governor Meacham to sign the bill that created the basic science school, which was a foundation on which we built them. Because we used to have such wonderful cooperative working programs back in those days between Republicans and Democrats. I wish they existed today. I do. We'll look it up to your views on current politics. Yes. Because I wanted just to give people a little more of your background. You come from

one of the oldest families here, the Chavez family, among your siblings, we're from Jelica Chavez. Yes. Tom Chavez at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Well, but so many of my brother, Quata Chavez. Quata. Yes. So Santa Fe, I'm actually for 27 years. My sister-in-law, kind of school superintendent, retired from the State Department of Education. Just a big family. We were 10, four girls and six boys. All six boys served in the Armed Services, and one of the girls was an AV nurse. And you got five battle stars. Five battle stars were a war in Europe. So my background, I was born in 1924, grew up during depression. Light about my age went into the service when I was 16 and a half years old and served for nearly five years when I came out as 22. And from 22 to college and politics simultaneously. Yes. Look, we did them both at the same time. I knew since I was a kid because I'd been a page boy. My dad was capital building superintendent in the 30s, you know. And into the early 40s,

and I got to be able to be a page in a reading clerk and stuff like that around the legislature. So I grew up with it. And then after the legislature, I mean, after the war, I already knew that I was going to be a state legislator. That was one of my goals and I accomplished it. So you were in the House of Representatives. Then you were in the Senate and served as Senate Majority Leader. Yeah, became Senate Majority Leader in 61. And then I was chairman of the Judicial Assistance Study Committee. We abolished the JPs, created the Court of Appeals, the Justice of Peace System. Justice of Peace System. Substitute of the President Magistrate System, created the Court of Appeals, Judicial Standards Commission, Central Court Financing. All that came out of that committee, proposed the Committee in six years. And that was from 1959 to 1965. So another thing that we did, on top of that, there was the junior college bill, the creation of the vocational technical institutes, the first being in Albuquerque. And you know, it's one of those, was an accomplishment.

But I wish we had time. So I give real credit to the people who came up with the ideas. Nice, I sponsored the legislation. But the guy that talked me into medical schools, for example, Dr. Ralph Ropus, Buddy Bratton, who's then chairman of the Board of Regions of University of Mexico. Well, the crew member, even lobbied my wife, Coral Jean, to make sure to get me the supportive Jack Camel, the vocational technical institute, which has been such a fantastic. I was there for the celebration of the 40th year there this past year. And Will Smith, one of the co-sponsors of the original bill out of the house was Willis and Jerry Brasher. They have Willis Smith's Brasher Hall, their named after him, who came over to the Senate side. We had only one senator from each county. And the senator from Bernalillo County didn't want to carry that bill. So they came to me. We need your help Fabian. So I picked up that bill. We carried it. And there you

have vocational technical institute, with over 17,000 students today. It's gone way beyond even their dreams. It's a really junior college because they issue associate degrees. Because of that, the junior college system was born. But it's hard to imagine, you know, this is such an important part of our state and our community. It's really hard to imagine the kind of vision it took back then to create those systems. And I know you want to share credit with everyone. But we know that you were a very powerful mover and shaker in getting these things to happen. Well, part of it was my being, my service with the Army. And I have to give a lot of credit of the people that I work with during the 50s and the 60s. Because the majority of them, not every single one of them. And I wouldn't be surprised if every single one of them, of the major efforts that I made, where people that work with me were veterans of World War II. They were, I was one of the younger ones, most of the other guys that I worked with were older than I was.

But we all grew up during depression days. And that had a lot to do with success that we had. We did not have the kind of animosity that exists today. Actually, the way the Senate was composed, I had more conservatives than so-called liberals in there. Because we had one senator from each county. And yet, I am a proud liberal. I'm not sure. You know, if you use the word liberal, I'll look it up to the dictionary. It's really two words. One of them is progress. The other one is reform. That's a liberal. And I was involved in the major legislation, which was both progressive in some of the reform. We reformed the JP system by doing away with it and creating the industry system. We reformed the liquor laws. We progressively created medical schools and vocational technical institutes. Better distribution, our equalization fund for our education, basic education, primary, secondary schools, created that central funding construction fund

in the multi-million dollar area now, with an initial $500,000, which was down because somebody brought me a problem concerning a school in Mora, which burned down and they had absolutely no money and couldn't raise enough money through bonds to build it. So we created a fund to take contingency of that type and then grew and grew and grew and grew and so on and so forth. But we're going to leave you legislator hat, take it aside and put on another heavy. I'm just trying to give your background here, you know. So you were the state superintendent of insurance. You were the director of development and the director of tourism and the assistant cabinet secretary for the assistant secretary commerce. For the United States America, national, huge national commerce. Yes and it was the I was actually the national tourism director with the title of assistant secretary commerce. But because of my background, versus the later on being bilingual, being Hispanic and speaking Spanish in English,

I worked a lot with the state department also and so I worked with what's known as the South American desk in the state department. I worked diligently with the issues having to do with Mexico, travel to Mexico quite often, working on, excuse me working on those issues and even got to be the first high federal official to visit the Fidel Castro in the conference that was held in Habano and which was quite a conversation that I had with that gentleman. How did he, thank you. And bright, he is a charmer and you have to look at him like a bottle of the eyeball, smile with him, he'll smile right back. He was fascinated by the fact that I worked, who spoke Spanish, but with the Mexican accent he said. So I counted and said he spoke beautiful Spanish to it, but with Caribbean accent. He laughed. He said, show me the difference, I said, well, with the Mexican accent we say, for Buenos Dias Señor como está usted. And you Caribbean say, Buenos Dias, what do you think? Oh my God. You doctor real fast and he

laughed, he says, that's right. Then we went from there on to other things and it was a very wonderful meeting with him. It was supposed to be 15 minutes lasted over two hours. But those are some of the things that went on. National tourism, well, my job was to sell the United States of America to the rest of the world as a destination. God's like selling in heaven. And when everybody would ask me, where are you from? I'm glad you asked. Because then I could put in a special pitch for Santa Fe and New Mexico, you know. Sometimes they used to have to explain where New Mexico was. But when I said between Texas and Arizona, oh, okay. But now we don't know. You know, we become my heavens. New Mexico is international. Yes, we're finally literally on the map. Yeah. In his person, all this, you made a very historic run for governor in 1968. You and Dave Cargo were head to head and he won just a little bit, but it really surprised a lot of people over the calm alone some days. He's always been a

member. Well, he was, he was the incumbent governor. So I ran against the incumbent and it was a, it was a bad year for the party really because he only lost by 2,910 votes, but he was hungry. He lost by 40,000 votes against Nixon. And so you could see the co-tail effect it had. And, uh, and, uh, but that was okay. I gave it a try. And the funny thing that came out of that, about two, three weeks later, happened to walk into the Ola Fonda cocktail lounge in Maofan Filosadillo, uh, since the retired judge, you know, he died from a car accident, but he was a real Democratic leader of Valencia County in Belén, Los Luna's. And he was there with a group of other Democrats. I think they were meeting for Central Committee meeting or something and it happened to walk in. He says, everybody stand up. Here can, he comes damn near governor. So, so a lot of people after they used to call me damn near governor. Well, you've had this whole life of public service. And I, one, one were equilated. In 2004,

you were among the New Mexican Distinguished Public Service Award winners. So the whole state got to say, thank you just last year. Yeah, that was, that was, that was real neat because, uh, some of the other award recognitions that were made that, that particular night, I got the Distinguished Service Award, but they had specific awards for different people there. And I had a direct tie with some of them of PR because of the things that I did when I was a legislator. For example, one of the recipients is Dr. Roth Medical School. There I am. And another one was, uh, let me see, there was a guy there from, from, oh yeah, president of the Vocational Technical Institute. And there I was. And, uh, so you sort of look around and you see people that are affected by the things that you did in a positive way by the things you did when you served as, uh, in, in public service. I'm by nature. That's the only way I can explain it.

A guy who thrills in doing public service. You know, other people like to make lots of money, like travel, paint, write, like my brother did, uh, do historical research, working, you know, I'd like to serve. There's a thrill, a personal thrill that I get when I do something and I see the results of it. This thrill, when, when you were given, uh, um, memorial congratulations from the New Mexico Legislature, which was later read by Pete Domenici in the U.S. Senate, it said Fabian is happiest when he is bucking the system to pursue a goal in the name of justice. Yes. Yes. And I got that from a quotation. I got that feeling. I'm a great fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, and, and to paraphrase a famous saying of his, how paraphrases by saying greet as a person who makes mistakes in the name of charity than a person that is stuck in the

eyes of his own indifference. Well, a person who's just indifferent to the things that are happening and can't do anything about it or doesn't want to do anything about it. I'm the opposite. I'll go after it. Sometimes I mistake here and a mistake there, but most of all I've had a pretty positive goal of accomplishments. And, and it's based on that. You have to not be afraid. If you see an ill somewhere, you cannot be indifferent to it. And that's why I fought for things like minimum wage laws. I passed laws against discrimination in places of public service. Because we used to have schools that were segregated in New Mexico, believe it or not. It was one of the first guys to push for the integration of our schools in our state, way back in 1951. There were found out that women could not serve on juries, believe it or not. In 1951, we passed the laws as they could. I mean, there were a lot of things going on. There was

that Fair Employment Practices Act, a student in St. Michael's College in 1949. I was a aide to Senator Tbilchavas who sponsored the first Fair Employment Practices Act in the history of the country, in the first in the state of any state in the union, and way before Senator Dennis Chavez passed one in the federal congress. So these are the things that that pushed me within to do what I did without. And I get that joy. Now, for example, I'm going to be 82 years old, and I'll be around the legislature helping any way I can with retiree issues, not only because I am a retiree. And I received the benefits of the work that I did in the investments that I've made over a period of my life. You were also on the board. I was on the board of Public Employment and Retirement Association. And I see that I can serve not only present retirees, but future retirees, but doing what I can now before I have lost all

my marbles. And I do it, and I get a big kick out of it. What is the difference you see between all these the years you've had of public service from when you started and where we are now 50 years later? They're still unmet needs. Yes, the big difference that I see and I have to use again the legislature is my source of painting. And that is that there's less civility now among those who served than there was in my time. And I don't know why that has happened. I think part of it is because of labeling the right wing, or far left wing, the right wing wackos, and then they started turning the word liberal into bad word, which they should not do. And we didn't use to label each other that way. For example, I have a very pro-liberal legislative record and a very pro-conservative

legislative record. But it actually is wrapped around the word liberal because it's progressive and it's reform. And when you put them both together and seen by a record, that's Fabian Chavez, so I can wear a badge of liberal. With honor. Yes, yes. So pretend that you were a politician and this was your first of those 50 years. What are some issues that you would go after? Oh my god, today, well, first of all, the biggest problem that we have, we still have to solve it. There's a lack of proper health coverage for majority of people, the citizens of the state, end of this nation and it's getting progressively worse. That is the biggest, biggest problem that we have. I think that I would try it some way somehow to try to restore some of the civility that we have to have if we're going to have progress at the, which you would call the governmental

birthplace level. That is the Congress, the legislature's the local level, the Congress's the national level, the leadership of both parties. And I don't know in this day and age whether see I am, I am a product of the Depression era and World War II. And I have to frankly tell you that being that with the same guys that I served with in the 1950s and 1960s is why we had such progressive years of accomplishment. But politically, dads. So how could you bring civility into the current situation? It used to be, it has to be. It has to be. Gentlemen, what argue on the floor of the senator, the House, about issues and ideas and then they go have dinner together. It has to be done by the leaders. They have to set the example. I think I could take over the majority of the

floorship of the senate that is as composed today and have it function better than it's been functioning. And the same thing is the House as I recall just recently seems to be better organized and more civil than the senate has been. I think one of the problems is somebody have to learn that we are a state. And that we have state titles, state senate state representative. And that if we put that deep into my mind that what we are doing as legislators is creating law for the state as a whole, not for us as individuals. When you do it for individuals, then you become very provincial and you start fighting, scrapping like kids. And I could sort of write a paper on it and go around a lecture all over the state. But to do that, you have to have a real strong degree of civility and the key word is respect, respect for one another. See, we all come from different sources. We are all creatures of our environment as we grow up.

And we have knowing that we have to recognize and respect the differences. And we used to do a lot of that. I mean, I had no problem being a very successful legislator and a majority leader because I practiced what I preached. So there are some major problems and they could solve them if they were just be more civil about approaching them and not so partisan. There's nothing in the books or in history that says that if you're a member of a minority, that you have to be an againner. It's an individual who makes the seat in the legislature, not the seat itself. And so there's a lot to be learned, but the leaders have to do it, even at the national level. You get a true leader at the national level that can unite the people of the United States and we will do better. And we have had such leaders before and we can have them again.

I think the nation is hungry for a leader who can really unite, not say they're going to unite, but just really, it may even be someone from outside the two-party system as we know it. Because they are locked into this kind of unpleasant dynamic. They have to just break away from that. And I believe it or not, one of the guys that did it and did the rest of the stuff, it was pleasant and Clinton. Now he fooled around and did some rare bad things personally, but there was something about the man and it showed what he did through his administration that separated him as president from him as a person who had sinned. He still had a high rating, even though everybody was teed off of him, including me for doing what he did on a personal basis. So you can develop leaders like that over a period of time. And we've had great leaders like, well, look what President Reagan did. If nothing else he gave the nation a feeding head, we were okay.

Sure we got problems, but we can solve him. It's very positive thinking. He was a great admirer of FDR. He always used to quote him. And I think he knew about that quote, better as a person who makes mistakes in the name of charity, when they get stuck in the ice, it was only a difference. And that's one of the problems we have. People get stuck in that ice. How would you cancel a young person who was thinking about going into politics? What would you advise them? Well, first I advise them to be lucky enough to find somebody as beautiful and as wonderful as my wife because I couldn't know what I could do without her. Picture again, Coral Jean Chavez. Yes, but look at this one. She didn't change 50 years earlier. She didn't change 50 years, lucky. Okay, one see them together, we'll show them together. She hasn't changed in 50 years. Well, that's a good start to have a help mate like that. That's right, but really get us good at education. She get basic education, get involved in, I got involved early in my youth,

in things that have to do with the society of your neighborhood and your city, your county, your state. Learn more about the existence of the entities that we are ruled by with our permission at the county, the city level, and so forth. I was always very involved in that. Once I got elected to the House of Representatives, since I was a kid, I'd been hanging around the house, I already knew the rules, I already had a feel for how the legislature works. I had recognized that people from different parts of the state come into this one chamber to try to solve problems jointly for the betterment of the state as a whole. And those I didn't learn from a book in school, I learned by observing and by participating. So, and then once I got out there, I was a natural. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I was a natural.

And as a matter of fact, I think it was Ernie Mills, he said that he had no learning about three guys that were natural legislators in his life. And I was one of them. I think the other one was Eddie Lopez. And then there was Chris King. No, there was another guy from Albuquerque, who was with Eddie Lopez over at the House of Representatives, Chienini. I don't know. No, I don't know. Yeah, but he was talking about natural legislators, people that hit the floor. Yeah. And so that worked in that way. Well, we've come to the end of our time, but you are truly a natural legislator, a natural leader, and you have given us so much over these years, we want to take this opportunity to thank you, Fabulous Fabian Chavez, for spending a little time with us. I promise we're going to do it again. Okay, because we have, you know, we have a lot of things that we can cover on specific issues, that I think it would be a value to people who listen to your program.

I think things are too. Thank you very much, Fabian. Well, thank you for inviting me. And I'd like to thank you, our viewers, for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future.