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Sunday, November 01, 2009
Reining in the Edifice Complex
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
Some men have their names on tags on their dress shirts. It helps to keep everything straight at the dry cleaners.
Pete Domenici — former longtime U.S. senator — has his name on buildings. At the University of New Mexico, there is the Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education, as well as Pete and Nancy Domenici Hall. At New Mexico State University, it's the Domenici Institute of Public Policy. And on the New Mexico Tech campus, it's the Pete V. Domenici Science Operations Center.
In Albuquerque, you can visit both the Pete V. Domenici United States Federal Courthouse and the Pete V. Domenici Indian Affairs Building.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Security Sciences Building is named after Domenici. In Santa Fe, the new New Mexico History Museum is. And in Albuquerque, the education building at the National Hispanic Cultural Center bears his name.
You may take a spin on Pete V. Domenici International Highway in Santa Teresa, get law enforcement training at the Pete V. Domenici Training Complex in Artesia or watch the action at the Pete Domenici Rodeo Grounds in Las Cruces.
If you're in Minneapolis, you might want to check out the Domenici Research Center for Mental Illness.
There has been widespread rumor that the federal General Services Administration had already decided to name the new U.S. courthouse being built in Las Cruces — a stunner of a modern building designed by Albuquerque architect Antoine Predock — for, drumroll, please, Pete V. Domenici.
That rumor is false, but it has riled up the coalition advocating for a different name on the building when it opens next year: Edwin L. Mechem.
Mechem was an FBI agent, a lawyer and a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives. He served four terms as New Mexico's governor and served out the final two years of Dennis Chavez's term in the U.S. Senate after Chavez died.
He was a Republican, and in 1970 he was appointed to the federal bench by President Richard Nixon. He served for 32 years as a federal judge.
Shortly before Mechem died in 2002, the federal judges here and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges from New Mexico sent a letter to members of New Mexico's congressional delegation about the courthouse planned for Las Cruces. They asked that it be named after Mechem.
Beyond his life of varied public service, Mechem was a true New Mexican. According to his former law clerk, lawyer Maureen Sanders, he chose his neckties for the ability to hide splatters of both red and green chile.
And he was a southern New Mexican. Mechem graduated from New Mexico A&M (now NMSU) and, like his father, practiced law in Las Cruces.
Was he perfect? I'd say not. During his brief stint in the Senate, he had the opportunity to vote on the Civil Rights Act, and he was among only six senators from outside the South to vote against it.
That has not stopped his supporters from going to the mat for him. Now that the funding for the Las Cruces courthouse is on track and its walls are rising, Sanders, U.S. District Judge John Conway and another former clerk, Philip Davis, have all written to Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall to ask them to honor the wishes of the bench that were made clear in the 2002 letter.
"Senator Domenici has done a lot for the state of New Mexico and has been honored by having more than one building named after him," Sanders told me. Wanting the Las Cruces courthouse named for Mechem isn't about dishonoring Domenici, but about honoring Mechem, she said.
"He was a walking history of New Mexico," she says. "He had a heart for the people of New Mexico."
Judge Conway put it this way: "Find somebody else in the state who was a four-time governor, United States senator and federal judge. The courthouse has to be named for Ed."
Federal buildings are born with generic titles, and it takes an act of Congress to name one after a person. (Domenici got his name on the Albuquerque courthouse by way of a line slipped into the massive 2004 Appropriations Act when he sat on the Appropriations Committee). If the New Mexicans in Congress decide they want to honor someone in that way, it will happen. If they don't, it won't.
Bingaman, Udall and Rep. Harry Teague, in whose district the courthouse sits, say they're not going to bat for Mechem or Domenici or anyone.
"When the building is completed, it will be called the 'United States Federal Courthouse — Las Cruces,' " Bingaman says. "Although there are many distinguished jurists and lawyers who have served in New Mexico over the years, there is no effort in Congress at this time to rename the courthouse."
In a taped oral history interview, Judge Mechem compared making decisions from the bench to umpiring a ballgame.
"You gotta call 'em fast and walk away tough," he said.
It sounds like our congressmen are taking Big Ed's advice.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com.
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