Almanac Home Browse By State Browse By Name State of New Mexico Gov. Johnson (R) Sen. Domenici (R) Sen. Bingaman (D) Rep. Wilson (R-01) Rep. Skeen (R-02) Rep. Redmond (R-03)

America's oldest settlements and its newest technologies can be found, in even surrealistic proximity, in New Mexico. For the oldest permanently inhabited city in the United States is not Plymouth, Massachusetts, or Jamestown, Virginia, or even St. Augustine, Florida; it is probably Acoma, New Mexico. Probably; because Acoma, inhabited by the Anasazi, "an agricultural, settled and architecturally sophisticated people," said historian Roger Kennedy in Rediscovering America, had perhaps 1,000 years of unrecorded history before Spanish conquistadors came upon them in 1540. Some 450 years later, much of what makes New Mexico distinctive derives from the people found here by the first European explorers -- something true of no other state but Hawaii. While the Pilgrims built flimsy wood houses, the Indians in New Mexico were living in extensive dwellings hundreds of years old, made with the adobe that is still the characteristic building material here.

Other state cultures are generally based on what early white settlers brought to the land; natives have mostly disappeared or been killed off by diseases contracted from the first white settlers. Not in New Mexico. The English-speaking culture here is superimposed, at times rather lightly, on a society whose written history dates back to the Spanish settlement of Santa Fe in 1609, and to centuries long past when the Pueblo Indians set up stable agricultural societies on the sandy, rocky lands of northern New Mexico, using small pebbles as mulch to retain scarce moisture. Pueblo culture is still celebrated in the Indian pottery that commands premium prices in Santa Fe and in the annual Gathering of Nations pow-wow in Albuquerque which attracts 30,000 Indians. Today, a very substantial minority of New Mexicans are descendants of these Indians or the Spanish, or both. New Mexico had the highest percentage of Hispanics (38%) in the U.S. after the 1990 Census. Nearly one-third of the people in this state speak Spanish in everyday life, and only a few are recent migrants from Mexico. The Hispanic roots go very deep, as witnessed by the recent discovery of Hebrew symbols left on Christian gravestones by the conversos, Jews who hid their religion after it was outlawed by the Spanish in 1492; there are families here who have secretly maintained Jewish practices for centuries.

New Mexico is the northernmost salient of the great Indian-Spanish civilizations of the Cordillera, which extend along the mountain chain through Mexico and Central America to South America, as far away as Chile and Argentina. Yet New Mexico also is a civilization built on modern technology. It was to a remote mesa called Los Alamos that General Leslie Groves brought his Manhattan Project scientists during World War II to build a secret town and develop a secret weapon that would in two explosions end World War II and change the course of history. Los Alamos remains a government high-tech laboratory, and New Mexico has others as well -- the White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, and the Sandia Laboratories near Albuquerque, run by Lockheed-Martin for the government, a non-nuclear high-tech weapons research facility, whose Intel computer, in early 1997, was the fastest in the world. And if New Mexico was in on the takeoff of nuclear power, it has also come in for part of the landing. Sandia's great mission now is maintaining nuclear weaponry know-how by using "pulsed power" research to simulate nuclear explosions. And New Mexico is a place where nuclear wastes will be buried beginning in May 1998: near Carlsbad is the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), where the Energy Department plans to conduct a seven-year test of radioactive waste storage.

These two kinds of New Mexicos, very old and very young, intermingle with others of intermediate age in different proportions in this land of majestically vast vistas. The Hispanic-Indian culture predominates north and west of Albuquerque, with picturesque old towns and some still-functioning pueblos. "Little Texas," in the south and east, has small cities, plenty of oil wells, vast cattle ranches and desolate military bases and resembles, economically and culturally, the adjacent west Texas High Plains. Here, as everywhere in New Mexico, government is a prime employer (accounting for 27% of jobs, one of the highest figures in the country) and often the moving force in the local economy. In the middle is Albuquerque which, with the arrival of airconditioning, grew from a small desert town of 35,000 in 1940 into a Sun Belt metropolis of 600,000 today. Albuquerque has a large Hispanic minority, as do many fast-growing U.S. cities. Its economy is based heavily on high tech, especially nuclear power; but it has relatively low income and education levels -- the downscale Sun Belt. Each of these three areas has about one-third of the state's population, and their impressionistic boundaries are followed pretty closely by the boundaries of New Mexico's three congressional districts.

For many years, New Mexico politics was a somnolent business. Local bosses -- first Republican, later Democratic -- controlled the large Hispanic vote. Elections in many counties featured irregularities that would have made a Chicago ward committeeman blush. New Mexico also had for years another feature of boss-controlled politics, the balanced ticket: one Spanish and one Anglo senator, with the offices of governor and lieutenant governor split as well. But for all its distinctiveness, in national politics New Mexico was a bellwether, voting for every winning presidential candidate from 1912, when it became a state, until 1976, when it backed Gerald Ford. In 1988 it voted 52%-47% for George Bush, 1% off the national average; in 1996 it was 49% for Bill Clinton, right on the national mark, and 42% for Bob Dole, just 1% off. In the 1990s Democrats have a strong base in the north, from Hispanics and from hip newcomers in Santa Fe and Taos. Albuquerque has been politically marginal; its migrants live more in trailers than expensive condominiums, and are conservative culturally but liberal on economics. Southeast New Mexico is as conservative and Republican as west Texas. Southwest New Mexico, around Las Cruces and Silver City, is more Hispanic and marginally Democratic.

New Mexico differs from other western and border states in other ways. There has been relatively little migration from Mexico or Latin America; many of New Mexico's Hispanics have long family histories here that go back centuries. And, despite the emergence of a Green Party that got 10% of the vote for governor in 1994 and the Catron County ordinance declaring it illegal for the U.S. Forest Service to regulate grazing, there has been relatively little fuss one way or the other over environmental issues. Large numbers of merlin falcons and red-tailed hawks wheel over a barren landscape with live remains of an ancient civilization and of America's highest tech.

Presidential politics. New Mexico, the most Democratic of the Rocky Mountain states and seriously contested in 1988, went for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Its bellwether status -- it has voted for the winner in every presidential election since statehood in 1912, except for 1976 -- seems more accidental than anything else; it's hard to think of a state more atypical of the nation. Hoping to secure the support he had in 1992, Bill Clinton was heavily active in the Albuquerque television market in 1996; the Democratic National Committee channeled more than $1.1 million in 1995 and 1996 to New Mexico Democrats for party advertising that boosted the Clinton/Gore presidential ticket. Bob Dole won the Republican primary 75%-8% over Pat Buchanan.

Congressional districting. The boundaries of New Mexico's three congressional districts were slightly redesigned for 1992, with the apparent aim of making the Republican-held 1st and 2d both marginally more Democratic.

The People: Est. Pop. 1996: 1,713,000; Pop. 1990: 1,515,069, up 13.1% 1990-1996. 0.6% of U.S. total, 36th largest; 27% rural. Median age: 33.3 years. 11% 65 years and over. 50.4% White, 1.8% Black, 1% Asian, 8.5% Amer. Indian, 38.2% Hispanic origin. Households: 56.0% married couple families; 29% married couple fams. w. children; 46% college educ.; median household income: $24,087; per capita income: $11,246; 67.4% owner occupied housing; median house value: $70,100; median monthly rent: $312. 8.1% Unemployment. 1996 Voting age pop.:1,224,000. 1996 Turnout: 556,074; 45% of VAP. Registered voters (1996): 837,794; 457,678 D (55%), 281,895 R (34%), 98,221 unaffiliated and minor parties (12%).

Political Lineup: Governor, Gary E. Johnson (R); Lt. Gov., Walter Bradley (R); Secy. of State, Stephanie Gonzales (D); Atty. Gen., Thomas Udall (D); Treasurer, Michael A. Montoya (D); Auditor, Robert E. Vigil (D). State Senate, 42 (25 D and 17 R); Senate President, Walter Bradley (R); State House, 70 (42 D and 28 R); House Speaker, Raymond G. Sanchez (R). Senators, Pete V. Domenici (R) and Jeff Bingaman (D). Representatives, 3 (3 R).

Elections Division: 505-827-3620.

Filing Deadline for U.S. Congress: February 10, 1998.

1996 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 273,495 (49%) Dole (R) 232,751 (42%) Perot (I) 32,271 (6%) Other 17,566 (3%)

1992 Presidential Vote Clinton (D) 261,617 (46%) Bush (R) 212,824 (37%) Perot (I) 91,895 (16%)

1996 Republican Presidential Primary
Dole (R)	53,300	(76%)
Buchanan (R)	5,679	(8%)
Forbes (R)	3,987	(6%)
Alexander (R)	2,676	(4%)
Other	4,822	(6%)

Back To Top