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New Mexico friends, fans offer praise and support for exiting Sen. Pete Domenici

By Kate Nash, Erik Siemers
Friday, October 5, 2007

Video

After 35 years in the U.S. Senate, Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, announces he will not run for re-election because of health reasons.

After 35 years in the U.S. Senate, Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican, announces he will not run for re-election because of health reasons. Watch »

Sen. Pete Domenici greets family and friends outside St. Mary's Catholic School in Downtown Albuquerque. The state's senior senator came to the school he attended to announce his decision not to seek re-election next year.

Photo by Craig FritzTribune

Tribune

Sen. Pete Domenici greets family and friends outside St. Mary's Catholic School in Downtown Albuquerque. The state's senior senator came to the school he attended to announce his decision not to seek re-election next year.

Fernando C. de Baca wishes Sen. Pete Domenici well as the senator's motorcade leaves St. Mary's Catholic School. C. de Baca, chairman of the Republican Party of Bernalillo County, was one of dozens of well-wishers who turned out Thursday to hear Domenici announce he will retire next year from his long life of public service.

Photo by Craig FritzTribune

Tribune

Fernando C. de Baca wishes Sen. Pete Domenici well as the senator's motorcade leaves St. Mary's Catholic School. C. de Baca, chairman of the Republican Party of Bernalillo County, was one of dozens of well-wishers who turned out Thursday to hear Domenici announce he will retire next year from his long life of public service.

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It took him 104 footsteps and a right turn from his house on Tijeras Avenue Northwest to reach St. Mary's School back when he was of school age, back when Albuquerque wasn't much more than today's Downtown.

It took a cross-country flight and a motorcade for U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici to return to his roots Thursday.

That flight, from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., brought Domenici full circle, back to a stage near what was once his 10th-grade homeroom.

The occasion was a homecoming of sorts, and also a goodbye.

Domenici will bow out of office in 15 months, bowing also to the disease that doctors say will claim his life.

"I come here today, to the site of the school that I attended as a boy, to tell you that I will not run for re-election to the United States Senate," he said, ringed by friends and family and with his wife, Nancy, beside him.

While the popular 75-year-old Domenici was sliding in the polls, the reason he must retire, he said, is simple. It's frontotemporal lobar degeneration - an incurable disease that impairs decision-making, alters moods and affects motor skills.

A doctor first suspected the disease in April. Domenici had a follow-up visit in mid-September.

"While the progression was slight, I had to consider whether I could, in good conscience, run for re-election and serve you as well as you deserved for another six-year term," said Domenici, who is in his 35th year in Congress. His term ends late next year.

"At this time I'm doing very well and have no doubts that I will be able to serve New Mexico for the rest of my term, and I will do that," he said.

While Domenici, in his 20-minute speech, looked ahead to what he says he'll accomplish between now and his last day in Congress, others who gathered in the Babe Parenti Gymnasium reflected on his career and charisma. Many had tears in their eyes.

Back when Domenici was a student, few expected the son of Italian immigrants who bagged groceries would grow up to be a New Mexico political institution.

Bing Grady, who attended seventh grade through college with Domenici, said there were always hints that Domenici had pull among his peers.

"We all played baseball for Bocce's team," Grady said. "He was the leader even back then."

Bocce is the ball used in Italian lawn bowling, but also Domenici's nickname, supposedly because his father thought he had a round face, Grady said.

While the two young men went separate ways after college, they met up again in 1977. By then, Grady was the president of Albuquerque National Bank and Domenici was well into his first term as U.S. senator.

"He (Domenici) started calling on me to do things. There were two people I couldn't say no to: him and the archbishop," Grady said.

Although many came to St. Mary's on Thursday to hear Domenici speak, they also were there for a campaign reunion of sorts. Or rather, the reunion of lots of campaigns since Domenici's public service career began in 1966.

Fran Langholf, 82, was Domenici's office manager during his failed 1970 gubernatorial campaign, and also during his first U.S. Senate victory, in 1972.

She put her arm around Corky Morris, 72, who managed Domenici's City Commission and gubernatorial campaigns.

"Those were good days," Morris recalled as he leaned against a walking stick.

Like everyone else at Thursday's event, Morris said Domenici's retirement was a loss for the state.

"I think we're losing a man of integrity, a man of character and a man of moral values," he said. "You don't get that a lot any more."

Langholf latched onto Domenici's gubernatorial bid, believing she had found a winner. He lost, but she moved on to his Senate campaign, even though New Mexico hadn't elected a Republican senator in 38 years.

"I didn't think he would do it," she said, but he won, and never lost another race. "He's going out as a winner."

Adele Cinelli-Hundley thought back on Domenici's even earlier days.

The campaign meetings for his first political campaign, his bid to become a member of the City Commission, were held at her house. Her late husband, Gene Cinelli, had urged Domenici to run as means of breaking up a commission that had too much Northeast Heights representation, she said.

Domenici, she said, ran on a campaign to give raises to the city's blue-collar workers.

"What we saw in Pete was that he was a native New Mexican and he knew what the struggle was," said Cinelli-Hundley, herself a former state representative and city councilor. "He understood how tough it was, working and raising a family. We were all raised the same way."

As Domenici expanded his own political career, he helped others build theirs, said state Rep. Jane Powdrell-Culbert, a Republican who started knocking on doors for Domenici when she was 14.

"I think I'm just so lucky to have had him and (former U.S. Rep.) Manuel Lujan, who kind of mentored me along the way, and now I'm a part of it," Powdrell-Culbert said.

"I think he's just an awesome guy, no matter what. He's my hero."

Others attended the event, just a day after news leaked that Domenici would not seek re-election, to pay respects to a man who used his Washington connections to help them personally.

Larry Willey recalled how Domenici helped pass a bill that allowed the spouses of veterans to receive care at veterans hospitals. Yet around 1986, his father, a World War I veteran, and mother - both in their 90s at the time - were having trouble getting admitted to the state-run veteran's hospital in Truth or Consequences.

Willey, now 80, had been five years ahead of Domenici when they attended St. Mary's. He had supported the senator in all of his campaigns.

"I said to him, 'It's time for you to do something for me,' " Willey said.

Domenici's staff helped Willey wade through the red tape in Santa Fe, he said, which got his parents admitted into the veteran's center they wanted.

It was after Domenici's motorcade had left and the gymnasium had nearly emptied when Dorothea Frantz and her daughter Sara Frantz arrived at St. Mary's.

They had missed the senator, which was a disappointment, because they had wanted to show their respect.

He had done something remarkable for Dorothea, they said - he helped revive the spirit of her deceased brother.

Dorothea Frantz had wanted to retrieve the military records of her brother, Jimmy, but it proved difficult. The papers were needed so Jimmy's widow - whom he met in Italy - could receive an inheritance.

Jimmy died in 1982. By 1987, Dorothea said, she was no closer to retrieving his paperwork.

"As a last resort, I wrote a letter to the senator and asked him please to get his (Jimmy's) Army papers to her," said Dorothea Frantz, now 91.

Domenici, she said, saw to it that the records - 320 pages - were retrieved from the military archives in St. Louis and given to the family.

"It was as if Jimmy and Mother were standing together," Sara Frantz said.

And it was all thanks to the man people call St. Pete.

"He went to all that trouble," Dorothea Frantz said, "for a stranger."

Tribune reporter Erik Siemers contributed to this report.