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This 60-day session of legislative sausage-making screeches to a halt at noon Saturday, but for one loyal lobbyist, it is also the end of a way of life she has known since she was 5.
Nannie Sanchez is calling it quits.
Well, maybe.
“This is my second home,” she says, a tear pooling in her eye. “This is my second family.”
If you’ve spent any time at the Roundhouse in the last 33 years, you’ve probably met Nannie (pronounced nahni, Hawaiian for “beautiful,” which suits her), scurrying in the halls, ferrying bills and other documents for the various top-shelf legislators she’s worked for, buttonholing lawmakers she knows on a first-name basis for her latest cause or passionately speaking before committees on behalf of the developmentally disabled.
In Santa Fe, she is known as the ambassador of the developmentally disabled.
She is also developmentally disabled.
Nannie Sanchez, right, goes over paperwork with her boss, Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, on the Senate floor. Sanchez is considered an ambassador of the developmentally disabled and has been a fixture at the Roundhouse since she was 5. (PAT VASQUEZ-CUNNINGHAM/JOURNAL)
Yet as she introduces me around to the people she knows – which is everybody – in the hallways behind the Senate chamber, it’s hard to think about her any other way than poised, driven, capable. Because she is.
Her mother, Rosemarie Sanchez, knew that the moment she laid eyes on her 38 years ago, when Nannie was a 2-week-old infant abandoned by a teenage mother too scared to care for a child with Down syndrome. Doctors had warned then that Nannie would never walk, talk or possess more than limited skills.
“Well, that was just nonsense,” Rosemarie said.
As a field coordinator for the Arc of New Mexico, an advocacy group for the developmentally disabled, Rosemarie was responsible for placing at-risk babies in homes. When Nannie came along, all placements were full.
So Rosemarie took her home.
Nannie was raised not so much as special needs but as special, a brilliant star that could shine, maybe in a different way but just as bright, if people let her.
People didn’t always let her.
“I have whip lashes on my back for every battle we have fought,” said Rosemarie, a woman of heart and steel who gifted her daughter with those attributes not by genetics but by example. “It was so difficult because no one wanted to place her in a regular class. But I kept telling them, she needs to be mainstreamed; she needs that chance.”
Nannie graduated with her class at Albuquerque High in 1993. When she applied to the Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute (now Central New Mexico Community College), her mother said they were told the school was unwilling to “water down” its curriculum for Nannie.
That didn’t discourage Nannie.
“It ‘couraged’ me,” she said. “I’m very couraged. I don’t put myself down. I stay positive.”
In 1997, Nannie graduated from TVI with certificates in computer and job skills. And she didn’t stop there. In 1998, she ran for the Albuquerque Public Schools board, with $400 and the political savvy she had gleaned from accompanying her mother to the Legislature and local Democratic conventions every year.
“I ran because I didn’t want anybody to go through what I had in school,” she said.
She lost the election but garnered an impressive 36 percent of the vote, her mother said.
Nannie served with the Center for Self-Advocacy, the Governor’s Commission on Disability, the state advisory panel of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Youth Development Head Start Policy Council. She was the host of a Channel 27 public access show called “Self Advocacy and Empowerment Show.” She became a consultant, trainer and presenter for Dreams of Self, an agency she founded to help empower the developmentally disabled.
Nannie is one of two plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the state seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to halt implementation of revisions to the Developmental Disabilities Waiver program until advocates, families and the disabled themselves can weigh in. The lawsuit was filed Feb. 14 on behalf of the New Mexico Waiver Providers Association, a grass-roots group to which Nannie and Rosemarie belong.
Nannie has worked as a part-time paid employee for a number of legislators every session. This year, she is employed by Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, a Santa Fe Democrat.
None of it would be possible without her mother, who serves as driver, sage and supporter. Nannie may be quite capable, but she still needs her mother’s constant care.
And her mother still needs to fight for the causes she believes in at the Legislature – those that will give a better quality of life to her daughter and the thousands like her.
“My son always tells me, ‘You’re almost 77. When are you going to take it easy?’ ” Rosemarie says with a laugh. “Even after I die, I will be saying, no, I have more to do.”
But Nannie is worried.
“I love my mom so much,” she says. “Coming up here is hard on my mom.”
And so, Nannie is giving up her job at the Legislature.
“It’s my decision,” she says. “It’s time to do something else.”
She wipes away another tear.
But, then.
“I have a secret,” she says, a smile returning to her face. “I’m thinking of running for office.”
State representative, she thinks. When the time is right.
And then as she sees Rodriguez heading for the Senate chamber, Nannie is off down the hall, back to work in this place she loves, this place that may not be ready to say goodbye to her just yet.
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
Call the reporter at 505-823-3603
