Elected 1972, seat up 2002 Born: May 7, 1932, Albuquerque Home: Albuquerque Education: U. of NM, B.S. 1954, Denver U., LL.B. 1958 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: married (Nancy)

Career:

• Political: Albuquerque City Comm., 1966-70, Mayor Ex-Officio, 1967-70.
• Professional: Practicing atty., 1958-72.

DC Office: 328 HSOB 20510, 202-224-6621; Fax: 202-228-0900; Web site: www.senate.gov/~domenici

State Offices: Albuquerque, 505-346-6791; Las Cruces,505-526-5475; Roswell,505-623-6170; Santa Fe,505-988-6511.

Committees:

• Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, State & Judiciary; Defense; Energy & Water Development (RMM); Interior; VA, HUD & Independent Agencies.
• Energy & Natural Resources: Energy; National Parks; Public Lands & Forests.
• Governmental Affairs: Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia; International Security, Proliferation & Federal Services; Investigations (Permanent).
• Indian Affairs.

Pete Domenici is in his third decade in the Senate and is beginning his third decade as chairman of--or ranking Republican on--the Senate Budget Committee. Certainly he is the giant political figure in New Mexico. Domenici grew up in Albuquerque, the son of Italian immigrants who ran a grocery wholesale business. He played baseball for the Albuquerque Dukes, practiced law, was elected to the city commission in 1966; he ran for governor in 1970, and lost to Bruce King. In 1972, when a Senate seat opened up in a Republican year, he ran and won, beating a Democrat named Jack Daniels. Ever since he has been re-elected by wide margins.

Domenici's great work in the Senate is on the budget. He got a seat on the Budget committee in 1973, his first year in the Senate. In 1990 he turned down the ranking minority position on Energy and Natural Resources, an important committee for New Mexico, in order to stay on the Budget Committee; he is also a senior member of Appropriations. For years Domenici was frustrated there. He was genuinely appalled at the deficits of the 1980s and was ready to recommend the bitterest of medicine--entitlement cuts, tax increases. But Democrats fought spending cuts and Republicans fought tax increases, so Domenici's victories were few and hard won. In May 1985, Domenici and Bob Dole got Republican senators to pass a freeze on Social Security cost-of-living adjustments; then Ronald Reagan dropped the COLA freeze in a compromise with House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and Senate Republicans, left exposed, lost their majority in 1986. Domenici backed the 1987 Gramm-Rudman Act, whose mechanisms, along with Reagan Budget Director Jim Miller's fixation on holding down spending, cut the deficit by about half; he backed the 1990 budget summit tax increase with its domestic and defense spending caps; like all other Republicans, he opposed the Clinton budget and tax package in 1993.

Domenici did not get his way after Republicans won majorities in 1994. His own preference was a plan with $476 billion in tax cuts, $1.4 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years and a consumption tax to replace the income tax. The pace was set by Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Budget Chairman John Kasich in the 1995-96 confrontation with Bill Clinton. But the tax increase he opposed in 1993 and the spending standstill in the budget eventually passed in early 1996 put the deficit on a downward trajectory. In this setting Domenici was the impresario in the negotiations that produced the May 1997 balanced budget agreement. In 1998 he opposed Kasich's and Gingrich's proposal for a large tax cut and effectively scuttled it. In January 1999, with the budget now officially balanced, Domenici took a different tack. He accepted Bill Clinton's proposal to reserve 62% of the surplus for Social Security, but argued that much of the rest should be devoted to tax cuts; he called also for increased spending on defense and elementary and secondary education. "We're beginning a period that I never could have imagined when I began doing this more than 20 years ago, a period of surpluses." He helped to shape the budget resolutions in 1999 and 2000, but as an appropriator helped work out the arrangements that resulted in exceeding the budget caps. In February 2001 he worked to pass the $1.6 trillion Bush tax cut and charged that Democrats had "anti-tax cut fever." In March he recognized that there were not quite 50 votes for either the $1.6 trillion tax cut or Bush's 4% lid on discretionary spending, but supported them anyway. He supported frontloading the tax cut but criticized Democratic proposals for a $300 rebate. Shy one vote in the Senate, Republicans did not end up reaching Bush's goals on the budget resolution. But they came close, and would have ended up much further away if Domenici had been lukewarm about the Bush plan.

Generally, Domenici is a passionate moderate, with a middle-of-the-road record. He has argued strongly for including coverage of mental illness in health insurance, and talked of the severe mental illness of one of his daughters. Working with Democrat Paul Wellstone, he got the Senate to include mental illness in the 1996 health care bill and got the conference committee to accept coverage with a low cap. Domenici cited evidence that mental health treatments are increasingly rigorous and efficacious; opponents feared high and uncontrollable costs. In 1999 and 2000 he co-sponsored bills to bar insurers from limiting hospital stays and outpatient visits at clinics for people suffering mental illness, to train medical professionals about mental health treatment and to increase HMO reimbursement for mental illness. In early 2001 he was working on reauthorization of the 1996 bill, due to expire in September 2001.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Domenici battled House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster's attempts to take the highway and aviation trust funds off budget. In 1998 Shuster succeeded in getting firewalls around highway trust fund spending. But in a December 1999 conference committee, Domenici beat his attempt to do the same for the aviation trust fund, by offering a conciliatory-sounding compromise which he knew Shuster would not accept. In late 1999 Domenici was also the chief sponsor of the Republicans' minimum wage increase, combining it with tax cuts for small business. Domenici pays close attention to New Mexico's Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. After the controversy over security lapses at Los Alamos, he sponsored the creation of a new Undersecretary of Energy for Nuclear Stewardship, taking much of the power away from Energy Secretary Bill Richardson; this was approved 96-1. He worked to double federal spending on basic research over 10 years and to prevent big cuts in nuclear weapons programs; he favors more use of nuclear energy to generate power, opening of an interim nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada, a reduction in nuclear weapons stockpiles and irradiation of food. Domenici uses his Appropriations seat to help New Mexico projects, notably the $101 million purchase of the Baca Ranch in Sandoval County, finally accomplished after four failed attempts in July 2000. This ranch occupies 95,000 acres in the giant bowl of the Valles Caldera, the remains of an exploded volcano that was once higher than Mount Everest; Domenici insisted that the government operate it as a working ranch. He has supported grazing rights on federal lands, threatening a filibuster in 1993 against a proposed 85% increase in grazing fees and demanding that grazing permits be renewed even if federal agents haven't completed environmental reviews in 1999. He made sure that the Senate passed $500 million for compensation for damages in the May 2000 forced burn fire that spread to Los Alamos and a nine-month extension for income tax filing for those affected. He opposed the Fish and Wildlife Service's attempt to ban use of Rio Grande water to save the silvery minnow. He was seeking in early 2001 to extend the program compensating nuclear facility workers suffering from radiation-produced disease. In February 2001 he introduced a bill to void Bill Clinton's last-minute change in the federal arsenic standard which, he said, would require New Mexico communities to spend $424 million to meet a standard "lacking a foundation of sound science."

Domenici has not been successful in seeking Senate leadership positions. He lost the majority leadership to Bob Dole in 1984 and the post of Republican Policy Committee Chairman to Don Nickles by 23-20 in November 1990. In December 2000 he made a last-minute race against Policy Committee Chairman Larry Craig; this was taken as a criticism of Majority Leader Trent Lott, although Domenici said it wasn't; in any case he lost 26-24. He has remained highly popular in New Mexico and has won re-election easily, most recently in 1996. But he has sometimes gotten involved in local politics. In the June 1998 special election in New Mexico's 1st District, he campaigned heavily for Republican Heather Wilson, who won. His Pete's Political Action Committee contributed more than $80,000 to Hispanic congressional and state candidates in New Mexico, Texas and California in 2000. In March 2001 his amendment to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill to allow increases in the contribution limit by candidates opposed by self-financers passed 70-30. That same month he criticized state Republican Chairman John Dendahl after a press conference in which he supported Governor Gary Johnson's drug decriminalization bills. Domenici's seat comes up again in 2002.

Cook's Call:
Safe. As long as Domenici runs, Democrats will be hard-pressed to recruit a top-tier challenger. As of spring 2001, Federal Communications Commission member Gloria Tristani appeared to be the likely Democratic nominee. In the unlikely event that Domenici retires, this race would be very competitive and former Energy Secretary and Democratic Congressman Bill Richardson would have to be considered the presumptive favorite.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	0	14	0	0	77	100	73	100	95	88	92
1999	5	--	0	0	8	--	68	94	88	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	19%	--	75%		40%	--	59%
Social	36%	--	59%		36%	--	62%
Foreign	23%	--	67%		42%	--	57%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. Y 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit N 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards Y 4. Phase Out Estate Tax Y 5. Review Movie Violence Y 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks N		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion Y  8. Broaden Hate Crimes List N  9. NATO War in Serbia N 10. Table Cuba Travel Ban Y 11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty N 12. Perm. Trade with China Y

Election Results
1996 general	Pete V. Domenici (R)	357,171	(65%)
	Art Trujillo (D)	164,356	(30%)
	Abraham J. Gutmann (Green)	24,230	(4%)
1996 primary	Pete V. Domenici (R)	unopposed
1990 general	Pete V. Domenici (R)	296,712	(73%)
	Tom R. Benavides (D)	110,033	(27%)

Campaign Finance
1996	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Pete V. Domenici (R)			$3,435,164
Art Trujillo (D)			$155,213
Abraham J. Gutmann (Green)			$12,025