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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Recollections of A Life Spent Trying Harder
By David Steinberg
Journal Staff Writer
“Taking on Giants — Fabián Chávez Jr. and New Mexico Politics” by David Roybal
UNM Press, $27.95, 304 pp.
This engaging biography is about Fabián Chávez Jr., one of New Mexico's most astute political figures in the second half of the 20th century.
Through the use of extensive direct quotes, author David Roybal lets the voice of his subject seep through on virtually every page, including the author's preface.
That's a good strategy because the affable Chávez, now 83 and a Santa Fe resident, is a marvelous storyteller and blessed with a photographic memory.
He can give you details of his youth in Santa Fe as easily as he recalls the behind-the-scenes battles and names of the partisan political fighters in hot issues in the Roundhouse, the building housing the state Legislature and the governor's office.
Chávez gladly shares his remembrances. He certainly felt comfortable doing so with Roybal.
Chávez, a native of Santa Fe, aspired to statewide public office. He never quite made it. He was a Democratic candidate for governor and, as Chávez recalled, lost to David Cargo by 2,910 votes.
In that 1968 race, Chávez's running mate was Michael Alarid.
“That's the only time that there were two Hispanics at the top of the ticket,” Chávez said in an interview.
“We lost it because Hubert Humphrey (the Democratic nominee for president that same year) lost by 40,000 to Richard Nixon.”
That may not have been the only reason for Chávez's loss. He said Democratic political heavyweight Joseph M. Montoya, then a U.S. senator from New Mexico, nicknamed Chávez and Alarid “the tortilla ticket.”
Chávez said he remembered fellow Democrat Ed Romero telling him that had Montoya helped the ticket, Chávez would have won the governship.
He had been earlier elected to the New Mexico Senate. At age 26 he became the youngest person to serve as that chamber's majority leader.
When he was chairman of the Judicial Systems Study Committee, Chávez said, it exposed the state's corrupt justice of the peace courts.
And, he said, during his tenure in the state Senate, he also helped pass legislation to rein in the powerful liquor industry.
Chávez said he was instrumental in passing legislation to create the system of junior colleges, including Albuquerque's Vocational Technical Institute, the UNM Medical School and, because he was a liberal Democrat, he worked to pass civil rights laws.
“Yet the big boys didn't like me — Joseph M. Montoya, Clinton P. Anderson and a lot of people in the Democratic Party,” Chávez recalled.
“Why didn't they like me? My fights against the liquor industry and against the JPs (justices of the peace). There were 300 (JPs) and most were Democrats, and half of them were precinct chairmen. But the system was rotten.”
At age 12 he hitched to California. When he returned home, the book says, his father had him placed in the boys school in Springer; he was there for one year.
At 16, he enlisted in the Army along with school friends, each forging the names of the others' parents on the application.
Years later, he remembered his swearing-in ceremony when he was chosen Senate majority leader.
“It was in the old Senate chamber, now the Bataan Building. I glanced up to the gallery and there was dad and a few other old guys. I nodded to him, thinking, ‘You did a great job, dad,' ” Chávez said.
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