New Mexico State Senator Dede Feldman's Blog

Straight from Source NM: Dede's article on the 2022 legislative session--The games people play

 The Games People Play

Calls of the Senate, filibusters and other delaying tactics

from Source New Mexico, Feb. 22, 2022

Last week’s frustrating end to this year’s legislative session left election reformers, voting rights advocates and others wondering: how could this happen? 

How could one senator filibuster for over two hours, killing arguably one of the most important bills of the session: the New Mexico Voting Rights Act? And how, days earlier, could Republicans — the minority in the Legislature today — issue a “call of the Senate,” blocking all discussion of the same issue?

How a call works

A call of the Senate or the House requires the presence of all unexcused members of either chamber. It can be issued by any member but requires the votes of six other members. 

The sergeant-at-arms,sometimes backed up by the State Police, is then charged by the presiding officer to round up the missing members — from their offices, nearby restaurants or homes. The doors are locked, and the remaining members are not permitted off the floor. The call is “complete” only after all are present. 

It’s easy to see how a handful of legislators in either chamber can stop debate indefinitely on any bill. The logjam is usually cleared by an agreement to remove the call — in return for something else. Or not.

At a time of deep partisan divide, either political party could theoretically put a call on every bill if they had the votes of a mere seven members. That has not yet happened, but the mechanism has been misused in the past, revealing not just run-of-the-mill political maneuverings but some seedy behavior as well.  

One call of the House that I remember in 2004 involved renegade Rep. Bengie Regensberg, the black-hatted cowboy from Wagon Mound who promoted cock-fighting and had a reputation for feisty confrontations. Regensberg was absent from a late-night call of the House, and Speaker Ben Luján sent the State Police to find him. 

Officers finally found him at his motel. The lawmaker proceeded to get into a fist fight with the State Police, according to reports.  He came back with a black eye.

Months later, he got a surprise challenge in his Democratic primary — newcomer Hector Balderas, who today is New Mexico’s attorney general. 

During the 1990s, Sen. Tom Benavides from the South Valley of Albuquerque was notorious for eluding capture during calls of the Senate. Benavides was best known for his black eye patch — a distinguishing feature you might think would make him easy to find when looking for errant senators. 

Not so. During one call, Benavides successfully hid under his desk. During another he donned a black wig and sunglasses and disguised himself as a woman. As police mounted a manhunt, “Mrs. Benavides” sat quietly (accounts vary as to whether she was on the dais or in the gallery) while senators fumed, only to erupt in laughter when Benavides shed his wig and sunglasses and they realized he had been there the whole time. 

Benavides was so slippery that in 1995 Lt. Gov. Walter Bradley had him followed by two burly State Police officers the last two days of the session. President Pro Tem Manny Aragon even presented him with a gag gift of handcuffs, to make sure that policemen could keep him locked to his Senate chair. 

He was defeated by Sen. Linda Lopez in 1996.

 

Republican filibusters also have a long history in the N.M. Legislature. Mostly reserved for the final days of unreasonably short sessions, they are effective for Republicans who believe that their main job is to thwart the majority and prevent new laws, government regulations or taxes. 

Republicans introduce far fewer bills and have less to lose in any delay, and so the filibuster is not just reserved for the final days but, as observers know, rolls on cumulatively during committee hearings, and even during announcements and miscellaneous — a nebulous time on the floor when in the Senate, the two-hour limit on debate does not apply. 

In 1997, my first year in the Senate, I was stunned by the last-day filibuster of Sen. Bill Davis, which brought down the capital outlay bill, as well as a private prison deal. Later I became more callous, if no less resentful, when in 2011 a $240 million capital outlay bill languished as Sen. Rod Adair and Sen. John Ryan engaged in what was called a “Laurel and Hardy” routine by then-Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez. 

At the turn of this millennia in the Senate, other fun and games included demands from either Davis (R-Albuquerque) or Sen. Ramsay Gorham (R-Albuquerque) that the entirety of a bill actually be read on “the third reading of legislation,” a parliamentary term for the time when debate begins on each bill.  The tactic was particularly effective when facing debate on, say, a 560-page bill. 

For years, defenders of these time-wasters have said these games are a way to prevent the majority from trampling on the rights of the minority. It’s true, but the damages can’t be denied. 

At the national level, Senate filibusters have historically allowed the denial of voting rights, prolonging the Jim Crow era. It’s why there is now a national movement to end Senate filibusters, especially as applied to essential components of our democratic system — like voting rights.  

It’s time to revise the rules here in New Mexico, too. Elections and voting rights are not a game to be played by obstructionists donning black wigs or telling folksy tales.

Filibusters would be far less effective in longer sessions.

Calls of the Senate or House should take into account Zoom and other technologies to allow members to participate remotely, as COVID has already taught us. 

And maybe, a professional paid Legislature, with regular hours, and fewer reasons for citizen legislators to be absent from their main job — lawmaking — would cut down on the fun and games.  ###

Ten More Doors Excerpt in Jemez Springs Newspaper

Here's an excerpt from my memoir Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change shared here in advance of a Book Talk I"m giving Saturday Feb. 5 at 2 via zoom for the Jemez Springs Library. Join at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82911494023 Mtg Id= 829 1149 4023; Passcode=Dede. 

I'll explain then: 

From Chapter 9: At Street Level

I walked by the house on Matthew Avenue today. It just didn’t look the same. The run-down old garage is now attached to the house, and a uniform plaster has been applied to the crumbling white façade that had confronted me, a wannabe senator, in 1996. I was knocking on doors in the neighborhood in search of votes.

I knocked on the door and mentally (and okay, maybe even verbally) practiced my pitch before someone answered the doorbell. “Hi, I’m Dede Feldman. I’m running for office— for the state senate—and I wondered if you had any concerns about the state?”

No answer. I rang again. I knocked. I was preparing to leave and put my “literature” in the door when I heard a voice.

“Running for office? Any concerns?”

It was a strange voice, a spooky, hoarse voice. It was coming from somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out where.

“Hello?” I yelled. “Hello?” it yelled back.

This was truly weird. It seemed to be coming from the garage, off to the side.

Time to leave, I thought, but then it said, “Running for office? Any concerns?”

Oh no, no, no—I’m out of here, I thought, just as a weathered looking man with Depression-era eyes and a gentle face opened the door.

“Yes?” he asked, squinting into the sun, his dirty hair in his eyes. He looked like he had just woken up.

As I started in on my pitch, I heard it again. “Any concerns?” “I was just about to ask...”
“Any concerns?”

I recognized the voice now. It was the man at the door’s. But his lips weren’t moving.

Suddenly the homeowner’s sad expression broke into a broad grin.

“Oh, that’s Marvin,” he said. “He’s my pet raven. They talk, you know. I trained him to say a few words, but he knows more. Learns ‘em from people who come to the door unexpectedly.”

We laughed and he offered to introduce me to the raven.

He led me to the garage and opened the door. I looked around. All sorts of hunting equipment was strewn about, fishing tackle piled in the corner, and construction debris everywhere. In the middle there was a covered cage with something moving inside it.

It was Marvin, and as soon as the cover was removed, he cracked opened his thick bill and croaked, “Any concerns?”

The bird was massive, with scruffy feathers that looked eaten. Maybe he had just been in a fight. He was iridescent, his feathers almost blue, and he had dark, dark eyes and talons that gave me pause.

It was my first encounter with someone who kept a wild animal as a pet. The raven had fown away twice, come back once, and the second time the man at the door searched for the bird day and night. He finally found Marvin in a tree in the South Valley. The raven recognized his call.

I’d never thought of animals as being part of my constituency, except maybe in the abstract. But things were beginning to add up in my semi-rural, semi-urban district in Albuquerque’s North Valley.

Sure, I’d encountered dogs. Pee Wee, Esse, JoJo, Buster, and Cholo had greeted me at the door on almost every street I walked. I’d been bitten three times. I carried dog yummies and pepper spray. I learned how to put my foot against the screen door so a German shepherd couldn’t lunge out before I’d had time to deliver my pitch. And I’d spoken over the yaps, the growls, and the barks to owners who said things like, “Skipper would never bite you.”

But ravens? Peacocks? Horses? Donkeys?

 “I want you to think carefully about this,” a stern older woman in the same neighborhood responded when I asked her about her concerns. “See those horses across the street?”

Dutifully, I acknowledged the Appaloosas, the ponies, and yes, even the donkey across the street. They ran in a pack behind the fence at the end of Meadow View Drive. They smelled up the neighborhood.

I loved the Appaloosas, but I shied away from the ponies after one nipped at me.

“Don’t you dare forget about them when you go to Santa Fe,” she said. “That’s why we’re sending you there—to protect them.” I could tell from her blunt gray hair and her relentless eye contact that she meant business.

“Yeah,” I stumbled around, agreeing all up and down, going on about how we need to protect the environment, and the rural character of the area.

She listened politely. She had heard it all before, and it hadn’t made a difference.

I probably couldn’t make a difference either, except at the margins. But the two encounters convinced me to sign up for the Senate Conservation Committee, which focused on wildlife, natural resources, the forest, game, fish, and yes, animal protection. Politically, it was not the best perch for an urban newcomer to the senate. But I never regretted it. I got to vote on saving endangered species, protecting the bosque, and preventing water waste and contamination.

Most of the horses are gone now from the field at the end of my street, and spiffy new houses surround the stables backed up against the ditch. I am afraid to knock on the door of the raven man. He’s probably dead or old, like me.

But at least I know I did my part for my constituents on Matthew Avenue—all of them.

Ten More Doors Got a Great Book Review in the Albuquerque Journal

Walking Tall

BY DAVID STEINBERG

FOR THE JOURNAL

Persistence, stamina and patience helped Dede Feldman endure the rigors of public life.

For Feldman, those qualities infused her passion to walk door-to-door for days on end, campaigning (unsuccessfully) for Albuquerque City Council and then campaigning (successfully) as a Democrat for the New Mexico Senate.

Her recent behind-the-scenes memoir, written in a sharp, personable style, is “Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change.”

The title points to a “what if.”

What if she had gotten 10 more votes? It would have been just enough to overcome the nine-vote loss in her 1995 council race.

Feldman didn’t give up.

She persisted and learned from the loss.

She redoubled her efforts going doorto- door for the District 13 North Valley seat in the New Mexico Senate. She won the seat in the 1996 general election and held it for 16 years.

In doing so she showed that a progressive, a woman and an Anglo from the East Coast could win a Democratic primary in a Senate district long-dominated by Hispanic politicians.

“My first instinct was right. If I simply got to know people in person, they would see that I was not a threat,” she wrote.

Her shoe-leather campaigning leaped beyond politics.

“I looked for voters, but I found community.

That probably was my most important lesson,” Feldman said in a phone interview.

She got to know the community’s fears, hopes, complaints, tastes and hot-button issues, and the community got to know her, her volunteers, and her plans for reform, Feldman wrote in the memoir.

Drawing close to the community “sharpened my compassion and empathy for the ordinary people who lived all around me, my neighbors for years,” she said. “But I never really knew them until I knocked on their door and found out what their life was really like. The knowledge and the courage that ordinary people had, that’s what really kept me going in the legislature.”

By campaigning, Feldman became aware of these hundreds of ordinary people. In her eyes, many became extraordinary and in some cases even heroic. In her first campaigns, she wrote, she heard stories of hardship, of success, of mental illness, of religious belief that formed the backdrop of policies she promoted as a lawmaker.

Feldman developed an understanding of her constituents.

She was chief sponsor of the 2001 New Mexico Kinship Guardianship Act. The law gave grandparents and other family members the right to raise children whose parents are unable to, according to Feldman’s reading of the law.

She also learned that passing legislation doesn’t always happen because a lawmaker wills it. Think of it “as a long game, especially when it comes to state and local policymaking. You start to think in maybe incremental successes,” Feldman said.

In one chapter, Feldman, her husband Mark and her students from a Pennsylvania Quaker school spent the summer of 1972 helping build a classroom in the central African country of Uganda.

Feldman writes of quizzing a class of Ugandan kids about the meaning of power as the country was on the verge of descending into terror under dictator Idi Amin.

Another chapter takes the reader back to 1955. The author, then a preteen, and her parents were on a family road trip in a new Plymouth station wagon from West Chester, Pennsylvania stopping at the Casa Grande Lodge near Old Town, a few blocks from where she would later move. What’s equally intriguing is that it’s the same year Feldman changed her name from what she considered stale — Mary Elizabeth — the first names of her grandmothers — to Dede.

Though no longer a candidate nor a public official, Feldman still goes door-to-door for other candidates. She encourages people to participate in public life “whether you’re inside as a legislator or outside as an advocate, an activist, a journalist or an ordinary citizen.”

Feldman serves as communications director for Common Cause New Mexico.

Its mission is to promote open, honest and accountable government.

Ten More Doors: Passing the Torch to a New Generation of Democratic Women

Last year, when I wrote my memoir, Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change, I couldn't stop thinking about young women who want to make a contribution, run for office, or start an enterprise-- just like I did back in the day.  That why I am delighted that New Mexico's first woman Commissioner of Public Lands, Stephanie Garcia Richard, Emerge graduate, fierce campaigner and champion of the environment, wrote the Foreword to the book, which is now available at local bookstores or directly from me at dedefeldman.com/tenmore.

 

Foreword to Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change

I remember a particular summer day in Dede and Mark Feldman’s Jemez mountain home, food overflowing their tiny kitchen, at least two dozen curious voters perched with paper plates on knees to hear from me—the newly minted Democratic legislative candidate for the surrounding district—as I tentatively began to tell them all how I was a force to be reckoned with. I told them how I would defeat the popular, ten-term Republican legislator who currently represented them. I told them how I would stand up for the forests and the canyons as well as the people. I lost that race but went on to win many more, nally achieving statewide office. Senator Dede Feldman and her husband Mark had taken a chance on me, an unknown, no-name candidate with no political experience. They went out of their way to give me a voice and an audience in the beautiful home that Mark built. I will never forget their early encouragement and support— both financial and moral. It meant so much to me back then that Dede, this well-respected paragon of progressive politics, saw something in me that was worth backing.

It is that memory—that summer evening—that came back to me full force as I read the pages of this memoir. And as I read, I kept asking myself how does Dede’s story fit into the larger story of New Mexico politics. Who is she, anyway? An out-of-stater, progressive-before-her-time, Anglo woman from the East. A reformer. A fighter. A mentor.

You see, being a woman in electoral politics when Dede did it was tough, because there weren’t many who had come before her. The organization, Emerge New Mexico, whose particular mission it is to train and run Democratic women candidates for one had not yet “emerged.” The landscape for women candidates and women office holders was still uncertain. We hadn’t had a woman in Congress yet, or our first woman governor, let alone more than one! There weren’t those she could look to in order to model herself as a female candidate or office holder to show her “how it was done.” For me, Dede is that woman who came before: the trailblazer, the way finder; one of the few that made it more possible and probable for candidates like me and countless others to succeed.

Politics in New Mexico has roots going back centuries; primaries here are often called “blood sport.” With so much colonialist history, years of intergenerational trauma, battles, and revolts, New Mexico has its own unique brand of what it means to run, win, and serve. Dede stepped into all of that with grace and a voice—like my own mother, a loud insistent voice—honed by years of journalism and tough campaigns. Though I never had the privilege of serving with her in the New Mexico State Legislature—I won my seat for the first time the same year Dede retired—I always knew her not only as a strong supporter of other ambitious female candidates, but as someone who had taken on the tough fights—prescription drug prices, health insurance, campaign finance reform—and even won some of them! I remember the newspaper articles, the photos of her alone on the floor, pressing for a tax on tobacco or transparent committee hearings, often running into a brick wall made up of the old guard, who thought they knew better. I knew her as a model, and a mentor. Someone who I looked up to and wanted to be. When Dede walks into a room— even today, though no longer in public office—people accost her in crowds to ask her opinion on this or that political topic of the day just to hear from her.

Today, as an advocate against big money in politics, Dede continues the struggle for a fairer, more equitable political system. Though no longer in the senate, she continues as a citizen reformer for the organization Common Cause, where she fights for seemingly unwinnable goals, inching ever for- ward toward a more just future.

Her voice is as assured and strong as ever. She continues to be a fierce campaigner, always pushing ideas before their time, never backing down. Dede is always moving forward, one step at a time.

It is my hope that this memoir will seal Dede’s legacy on the list of New Mexico progressive reformers and spur a younger generation of activists to see the value in perseverance and good, old-fashioned stubbornness—no matter how many people say, “It can’t be done!”

Stephanie Garcia Richard New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands March 2021

Authors Bill deBuys and Dede Feldman: More than Local

Author Bill deBuys was recently interviewed by Laura Paskus on In Focus about his new book, The Trail to Kanjiroba: Rediscovering Earth in an Age of Loss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMU64Ioe68g He’s been one of my heroes since we worked together on creating a Bosque Council and the Valles Caldera in the legislature. He’s not only a New Mexico treasure but a superb writer and craftsman. I know so many people who are trying to write, grappling with the things I did in Ten More Doors—difficulty in being hopeful, the reexamination of why we’re at the current impasse—that I thought I’d pass this gem along.

It’s an In Focus “extra” with him about his own writing process and it applies to writing any narrative—and then ending it! He says the ending of his new book is encompassed in the last 16 words. Imagine! Check
it out.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMVDuiCl3g

So proud that he read and liked Ten More Doors. Here is what he says about it: “High-level politics is like championship sports: defeats are as crushing; victories as joyous. You make a game plan but have to be ready to change it. You learn to know your teammates, how they play and where they are on the field. Same for your opponents. Ten More Doors will lift your appreciation, not just of the game, but of the difference a top player like Dede Feldman can make.”

Both books are available from local bookstores like Bookworks, Collected Works, Garcia Books and Organic Books, as well as IndieBound.org, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.

 

NM In Depth Calls Ten More Doors "Surprising... A Cautionary Tale"

Reviews for my just published memoir, Ten More Doors: Politics and the Path to Change, are beginning to come in.  Here's what Marjorie Childress of New Mexico In Depth said about my take on the NM Senate circa 1997 compared to the US Senate now.

"People interested in how power plays out at the statehouse will find former Sen. Dede Feldman’s new memoir interesting. I was surprised, for instance, by how Feldman draws an analogy between New Mexico’s senate majority in Santa Fe in the early days of her career with Republicans in Washington, D.C. today.

I wanted so much to be a part of the Democratic team, even if the team was not so much a team as a rubber stamp. At least it was a rubber stamp for the liberal values I held dear. Or so I told myself,” writes Feldman, who became a state senator in 1997 when former Senate President Pro Tempore Manny Aragon, a Democrat, ruled the Senate much like a feudal lord.

A few years later Aragon was deposed by Richard Romero in 2001 with the help of two other Democrats—Cisco McSorley and Leonard Tsosie—and the Republican caucus, who banded together to elect a new leader over the strong objections of the rest of the Democratic senators.

Romero didn’t stay in the Senate long, and has since become a regular sight at the statehouse as a lobbyist. (I’d like to read his account of why he joined with Republicans and in doing so created a blueprint for conservative dominance of the state senate. He’s not a conservative, nor are McSorley or Tsosie. But the “conservative coalition” in the senate quickly formed after Aragon was toppled, with more conservative Democrats and Republicans having the power to anoint the senate president, who indirectly controls senate committee assignments and thus the ability of legislation to ever make it to a final vote. Two decades later, after a handful of powerful senators lost their seats during the 2020 primary, the Democrats have finally coalesced again behind a progressive leader, Mimi Stewart.)

Feldman doesn’t describe the wheeling and dealing behind Romero’s coup, but she does describe the fallout. A bitter year of acrimony among Democrats, with Romero and the two Democratic senators attacked on the regular.

I had just moved to New Mexico and wasn’t following the Legislature much in 2001. But I heard rumblings. I also heard good things about Manny Aragon. I was living and working in Albuquerque with people who considered Aragon a champion of low-income communities. Feldman agrees that he was. He was more aligned with her politics, she writes, and she had promised to vote for him despite the corrupt way he ran the Senate.

From her description, Aragon emerges as tyrannical, directing the finance committee on how to create the state budget “from a small scrap of paper kept in the pocket of his double-breasted navy blazer” and appointing the chairs of committees without consultation. He humiliated opponents or members of the administration who testified before his committees, belittling their appearance and demeaning their abilities.  Aragon introduced over 50 bills per session and pushed them through single handedly, she writes, by holding other bills hostage and trading favors.

Feldman describes three senate colleagues who eventually went to jail or prison for corruption: Phil Griego, Dianna Duran, and Manny Aragon. “While I was in the senate, corruption was right next door and sometimes only a few seats away.” She writes generally about corruption, and the effort to create a state ethics commission. But in her piece about the toppling of Aragon, she dwells more on the perils of loyalty at any cost.

Senate Democrats sat silent under Aragon, Feldman writes, which she likens to Republicans in Washington, D.C. today, who put up with outlandish abuses by Donald Trump.

“Yesterday’s Democratic partisans in the New Mexico Senate stood in solid support of their leader of 13 years,” she says. “Even when his personal attacks, his bullying, and his sharp reversals left them hanging, they didn’t mind. They said no one could do the budget like Manny. No one could hold forth on the floor in defense of people with disabilities or people whose only sin was to be Hispanic or poor. He was a strategic genius, a chess master with daring plans. He knew each of the senators personally, the needs of their districts, their pet projects, their weaknesses, and their wives. It was part of his power.”

Feldman was relieved when Romero was elected. “I was ashamed that I didn’t have the courage to vote for him. He was sticking up for the process—the rules of the game—that Aragon had repeatedly swept aside in his quest for power.”

For years, a fair process hadn’t mattered in the Senate, Feldman says. Aragon took care of what Democratic Senators needed — their capital outlay needs, and their priorities advanced. But after Aragon was toppled, a better Senate emerged, one that made bi-partisan coalitions fruitful and allowed tough legislation to make ground. Feldman, the good government reformer, blossomed.

“Writing this now, recently living through Trump and his allies in the US Senate, it all seems so obvious,” she writes. “The rules of the game are thwarted regularly by a president who has no regard for democratic principles (with a small, not a capital, “D”).”

The Republican senators know better, she says, but are willing to go along with anyone who helps them retain power and move their partisan goals even if the former president led them to break long standing rules of the game.

Feldman says the Republicans under the leadership of Mitch McConnell remind her of the New Mexico Senate in the 1990s.  

The longer it goes on, she writes, the harder it is for senators to resist. They’re “forced to swallow bigger and bigger lies, more acts of outright corruption, more firings, more racial dog whistles, calls to violence, betrayals of foreign allies, even infringement on their own power.”

Her condemnation of Republicans and Trump isn’t surprising given she is a progressive Democrat. More surprising is that she lumps herself and other Democrats in the 1990s in with that same behavior.

Similarly under Aragon, she writes, ”Manny was moving the ball down the field in the right direction faster than most leaders. But there was something wrong, something corrupt about taking bills hostage, damaging the reputation of any who oppose you, and bending the rules.” He had his enablers, apologists and beneficiaries, just as Trump and McConnell do, she writes.

It’s a cautionary tale for public officials, especially in a state with a dominant political party that controls the statehouse and governor’s office. 

Feldman gives Richard Romero a lot of credit for understanding some things are more important than short-term political gain, and says his courage was an inspiration to her during the years she was in the Senate. 

There’s more detail in her book. And more stories about her career in the senate, as an activist, and long ago, as a journalist. She dwells on the importance of “the long game” when it comes to social change, describing how long-desired achievements met with defeat years before they came to fruition. It’s a good reminder. "