Mary-Charlotte Domandi:
You have a successful career, your sons are grown, they’re in college. You have a nice life in Santa Fe. Why did you choose to run for Congress?
Teresa Leger Fernandez:
Well, it really was the first time in my life where I felt called to do something. And there was actually a physical call in the sense that my brother gave me a call when he learned Ben Ray Lujan was running for the Senate and urged me to run, and other people did as well. But it was the first time that I sat and thought about it and realized that I had something to offer the district. And that this was something I had to do because of what I could offer that I had been working in this successful career. That was really a career that was about serving people in New Mexico in wonderful ways. And it gave me a lot of joy. It gave me a lot of personal satisfaction, professional satisfaction, but I realized, and I know, that Congress has a big impact on New Mexico and on the communities that I care a lot about.
And so I started thinking about it very seriously. I was told that I should make a decision quickly so that others who might be interested in running would know that I was in and who I represented and what kind of potential leader I would be, so they could make their own decisions about whether to get in or not. I spoke first to my sons to find out whether they would be supportive and they asked very good questions. My middle son was so excited about the idea, Abelino. My youngest son by one minute, Abelino’s twin, asked the very important question which was, And what would we have to do? And then my oldest son was also supportive. But I also spoke to the pueblo leaders that I worked with. And one of them had great advice and said, Teresa, I want you to get very quiet and listen to your heart. And what does your heart tell you you need to do? And I got very quiet, and I need to admit, I actually teared up and we all teared up in the room at that time. And I said, my heart is telling me I should do this. And I must do this. And he explained that sometimes we are called that destiny has a role for us to play, but we must each make the decision and listen to our heart and determine whether we want to and can take it on. And so it was something that I felt called to do, and my heart told me I needed to do it. And I had the support of those who are closest to me for doing it. And so I, I chose to run at that moment. But it really was an understanding that Congress has this ability to impact our lives.
And I truly felt in 2019, that 2020 was going to be a transformative year. And that Congress in 2021 with hopefully a new president was going to be a transformative year as well. And I wanted to be part of that transformation because I thought it would be very important to take the stories that I knew from New Mexico to Congress to have that impact. I had worked in the White House before, I had worked at very high levels before. And I knew that there was not always at the table people who had experiences like mine. And that that would be very important to take those experiences of New Mexico, of places of poverty, of people of poverty, but people who are maybe living in poverty, but were rich in their traditions, in their identity, in their culture. And that that kind of unique blend was very important, that that voice was very important to be heard in DC.
MCD:
You just mentioned that Congress affects people here in New Mexico. We’re thousands of miles away from Washington, DC, people living in pueblos that far preceded the founding of this country. Give us an example or two of ways that what Congress does in DC affects New Mexicans, affects Pueblo people in particular.
TLF:
Well, Pueblo people, Native Americans—their relationship is with the federal government and not with state governments. They sit in equal footing with a state government vis-a-vis the federal government. So the federal government, their laws affect Native American tribes and tribal governments. There is a trust responsibility owed by the federal government to Native American tribes across this country. And that federal responsibility is to protect the land, to provide healthcare, to provide education. Those are the key things, and they have failed in that obligation for centuries. There was an attempt for centuries to try to obliterate the Native American tribes. And in 1924, they finally recognized that they had failed in that policy. And they passed the Indian Reorganization Act and said, okay, we’re going to stop trying to get rid of you because you have been so resilient that we have not been able to get rid of Native Americans and their traditions and their governments.
And they decided that they would start treating them in a different manner. It was called the Indian Reorganization Act, and they would start treating them as governments who were in the best position to provide for their own people and govern over their own people. And so that was the beginning of a change, but we still haven’t accomplished what was promised in 1934. And what was promised when the Europeans, whether they were the English or the Spanish or the French, first came to the Americas in terms of all that has been lost by Native Americans. So that’s with regards to Native Americans’ part of that relationship. So it goes to everything, clean water to education, to health care and everything in between.
MCD:
You’ve spent so much of your career as an attorney, working with Native tribes, with pueblos here in New Mexico, what did you actually do? What are you most proud of and how does that work inform what you want to do in Congress?
TLF:
The great thing about working with Native American tribes is that you get to do a little bit of everything. So I did graduate work in economic development before I went to law school. And I actually at law school, both UT Austin and Stanford, I did work in economic development. A lot of the work that I did when I came back home to New Mexico and started working with tribes was in the area of economic development. So I helped them start businesses. I did a lot of groundbreaking work in terms of trying to take capital into Indian country, because if you don’t have capital, you can’t build a business. You can’t put in sewer systems, you can’t do any of the things you need to do because it takes capital. It takes money to build things.
And so I did a lot of groundbreaking work in that. In fact, I did almost a billion dollars worth of financing of everything from health clinics, to schools, to businesses, to golf courses, a range of things that some might say, “Are golf courses that needed?” but it’s part of an economic development strategy. But then I’ve also did a lot of work that I was very proud of with regards to voting rights. I raised all of the voting rights act issues to protect Native American voters, to protect their ability to access the ballot, to fight against gerrymandering. So I did a lot of that. I did a lot of work on preservation of cultural resources, and because of some of the groundbreaking work I had done president Obama named me to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. And after I was there a year, he elevated me to be the vice chair. And then I did work on environmental issues as well—everything from fighting a coal mine to fighting for things like building renewable energy. So it gave me a wide range of experience. That will be very useful as I start looking at issues in Congress that I can already see it’s been useful, I’ve already used some of that experience. And some of the legislation that will be coming up in 2021.
MCD:
Voting rights is such an important and interesting issue. And I wondered how the problems of voting rights and really unequal access to voting rights across the country—how is it similar to, and maybe not, some of the voting rights issues that Native people have here in New Mexico,
TLF:
The inability to have equal access to the ballot and for every vote to count equally affects minority communities and poor communities across the country. The way it plays out in each community is slightly different, but there has been a sustained effort to keep people from the ballot, to keep citizens from voting, who should be able to have the right. Our democracy only works if everybody has equal access to the ballot, and if every vote counts equally. I first started working on voting rights issues when I was with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. They are the preeminent legal advocacy group for Latinos in the United States. I was the vice-chair on their board for six years. And so we had a very active voting rights program at MALDEF. I actually took that experience and knowledge from Latino issues at a national level, and brought it here to New Mexico and started working with Native Americans on that issue.
And so it’s the classic stuff—make it very difficult for them to vote. When they register to vote, forget to actually input the information. So when they go to vote, their name isn’t there. For Native Americans the language issue is there, because some Native Americans have difficulty still, especially the older ones, with the English language, so need a translator. One of the issues I took up was the fact that they were not putting early voting sites out in rural areas or in Native American areas. So as we now know, early voting has grown exponentially, but while it was on it’s rise, the County clerks would not putting in the early voting sites at any reservation. Early voting was already accounting for over a fourth of the vote. And there was not a single early voting site throughout New Mexico in Indian country.
So that was the kind of thing that we in New Mexico are willing to tackle and address these things. So I took that issue to speaker Lujan, Ben Lujan, and we agreed it was a Voting Rights Act challenge, and that we didn’t want me suing the state over it. And instead we’d just fix it legislatively. But that’s the great thing you can do in New Mexico—when you have the right confluence of leaders, you’re able to get stuff done without having to go to litigation. So that’s an example of where there was a problem. We identified the problem. We fixed the problem through legislation, which is a lot nicer because everybody participates and at the end, everybody was, yeah, this was good. And everybody then found out about it, because the tribes that were included, the County clerks, we included the Secretary of State.
And so we raised awareness about the need to get early voting out in the rural areas, in the Native American areas. And so that was very good. And now with what happened with COVID, it speaks to, if you start that work early, then you’re better prepared to deal with the disaster that we saw, and the huge needs. There were other reasons why our Native American vote was suppressed for the primary, especially, but that was mostly because of the pandemic having such a negative impact on the health situation, but not because there wasn’t access to the vote. Now you go to Dakotas, you go throughout other parts of the United States and they are still trying to suppress that vote. Why? Because in certain counties and in certain states that Native American vote is small, but it’s big enough to make the difference as to who wins or doesn’t win. In Arizona Native Americans and Latinos made the difference for President Biden winning and Arizona. But that’s the case in many other States in the West.
MCD:
So what are your legislative priorities starting off once you get to DC?
TLF:
Well, I’ve already had input into HR1, which I called the protect our democracy, protect fair elections. The very first piece of legislation that Congress will introduce in the 117th session will be a bill that is great because it covers all of the kinds of electoral reforms we would want to see—from independent redistricting commissions to campaign finance reform to making it easier to vote to requiring that everybody make it easy to register everybody same day registration—a range of reforms that would transform our democracy. We’d have the kind of participation we should be seeing in the United States if this bill passes. So I’m going to continue to support legislation like that. That was legislation that was actually introduced in the 116th Congress. And so they brought it back up and the great thing is I looked at the bill and because of my experience, I said, Oh wow, what about these 10 things? And then we went back and forth and they had already covered like six and a half of those things. So three and a half issues I was able to have input. We were looking at making sure that those make it into the bill. And the reason I had that knowledge is because I had been on the ground, both in the community and in the courtroom, working on these issues. So voting reform and democracy is a big one.
MCD:
And part of your input is specifically about making it easier for Native American people to vote, right?
TLF:
Part of it is. But another part of it is using that example about making sure that it was as easy for Native Americans or for people in rural areas to vote as it is for the city. Right now we have, in some places where people are waiting 10 hours to vote. That is an abomination, especially when in that same state or city, there are others, just a few miles away who wait 20 minutes. And the people who are waiting twenty minutes are usually in a wealthier or community, or probably not in a community of color—that in itself should be seen as a violation of the voting rights act and really suppresses the vote. What dedication, right? What dedication for somebody to wait 10 hours. And how many people really have 10 hours to dedicate to waiting to vote? But they did it.
They did it because they were democracy heroes in my mind. So part of it was saying, we should address that, we should address the unequal access to the polls, and we should make sure that everybody has access to the polls where they don’t need to wait 10 hours, where they’re all waiting about the same amount of time, make it even for everybody. So that’s another piece of suggested language that I suggest they include in that legislation. So it’s not just Native American. Sometimes you get ideas from one area, but they apply across the nation.
MCD:
You were starting to go into other legislative areas that you’re also looking at.
TLF:
So we know that to come out of the Trump-COVID recession we are going to have a large infrastructure/economic recovery bill. What we’ve seen so far has been really trying to keep people afloat so they don’t lose their homes, so they have some kind of money coming in, so unemployment goes through, and a long list of things that the COVID relief bills have had to date. But we haven’t had that big bring us out of the recession kind of bill, because we didn’t have the alignment of the presidency, you know, in Congress to get that done. But we will have a president who’s already said he knows that needs to be done. So I want to make sure that I have input into that so that we are getting the kinds of things we need in New Mexico. When we solve this problem of the economic recession of 2020, we want to also be addressing other problems that we have.
So we are addressing the structural inequities that have caused the kind of damage we’ve seen in minority communities and poor communities and working class communities. Right now, the United States has a lot of structural problems that make it a very unequal society. And we need to start addressing those and why not do it now, we’re going to have a big investment. Let’s invest in fixing what’s wrong with the United States. So I would like for us to make sure that we invest in an infrastructure that is defined as broad, that is defined as including everything from early childhood education to broadband, because we know that without access to the internet, you’re going to be left behind and you can’t go to school. And you can’t have a small business that operates from one of our rural areas in New Mexico or operates in Santa Fe. Santa Fe doesn’t even have great broadband in all parts of the city. But also let’s invest in what we need for our renewable energy future. We need to also invest in, what do we need to do to come out of the climate crisis? So I want to be one of those voices—there many saying this—but I want to be one of the strong voices saying, we must use this opportunity to begin to invest in the things we need to address the other crises we have, including our socio-economic crisis, our climate crisis and our racial crisis.
MCD:
I always wonder what is in it for the people who really want to keep poor and minority people down because ultimately on many levels, it actually benefits the economic system when you have more educated, more empowered workers and citizens than if you don’t.
TLF:
That is the perspective that I have. And I agree with you completely, that our society will be a much more vibrant, healthier, happy society when we have a more equal education, more socioeconomic advancement and opportunity for people. The reality, if you look at a graph of the income inequality that’s happened since Reagan, you see exponential growth and concentration of wealth in the very few ultra wealthy, and that has gotten even worse during the pandemic. And so there are those who have an interest in an unequal society. And there are those who have an interest in a society that doesn’t work collectively on our problems, right? And many people have written about this, and we didn’t address the climate crisis because Reagan and Thatcher came in at the same time that we started talking about the climate crisis and that would have required everybody working together in a coordinated fashion to address this. It would have probably also meant that large corporations wouldn’t have been able to get away with the things they’ve gotten away with.
So there are those who are very powerful, who have a lot of control over many elements of our electoral system who have an interest in this accumulation of wealth and this accumulation of power at the top. And so they utilize things that make it so that they are able to continue to accumulate that wealth and power, even though it’s not democratic. That accumulation of wealth and power is actually very undemocratic because you were having to actually suppress democracy in order to continue to enact policies that are not for the benefit of the majority of the population.
MCD:
And as we know that until we enact campaign finance reform, people in those extremely wealthy categories have an, as you say, outsize influence on who gets elected.
TLF:
Absolutely. And I think that we also need to recognize, and I have found this, that as I’ve campaigned over the last 18 months is that there are also many who are also wealthy and believe that we need democracy and believe in campaign finance reform. So I don’t want to paint a brush to everybody who’s done well and is heading up a corporation or a business shares these anti-democratic values. But as a whole, there are major problems.
MCD:
So this leads to another question which everybody’s talking about and infinite amounts of ink and pixels have been spilled on this, which is the polarization in our country, which to some extent is manufactured by a divisive media environment. And to some extent goes back centuries. I mean, we’re talking about some of the same issues that the Federalists and Anti-federalists were talking about in the 18th century. Some people now are saying bipartisanship, we need to reach across the aisle and cultivate bipartisanship. Others are saying that Democrats, now that a democratic president has been elected and so on, should fight for democratic values rather than waste time failing at a bipartisanship that the other side doesn’t even really seem to want. How are you thinking about this?
TLF:
I’m thinking that we have really big issues that we must address and we need to do so in a manner that addresses those issues. I would hope that Republicans would also recognize that we need to do a large investment in our infrastructure, and they have said so. And so I welcome their support and their vote. I think that if they are unwilling to do these things that would be very good for their own constituents, that we should not give up our desire for them and our need to pass them. But I think that when you start talking about very specific issues, my hope is that our Republican colleagues would say, yeah, I want infrastructure, I’ll vote for some infrastructure, because that is in their constituents’ best interests. But if they don’t come along and if they don’t want, and we have enough votes to pass an infrastructure bill and they don’t want to join us, we need to pass an infrastructure bill.
So I think that that’s how I see it, is that we should try to work on things and work on things together and get it passed if we want. As an example, Democrats wanted the higher payment to individuals, the stimulus bill, and many of the progressives wanted a payment that wasn’t a one-time payment. Because that’s been a part of problem—you got one time payment and then this crisis has gone on for months—that they wanted something like what’s been done in Europe, where you have these regular series of payments as long as the crisis goes on. We were not getting that. The bipartisan group in the Senate said, that’s not part of the deal, but it was another bipartisan group that came up with a much smaller number of 600 that got something in there.
So there was an opportunity where we were running into a roadblock and the Senate was saying no, and there was actually a bipartisan group in the house that pulled in some Republican senators that said, yes, we need at least something. And so they got at least something. And so that’s an example of where we didn’t get what we wanted. We pushed for it. We pushed for it, the Senate was blocking it. And then because there was a bipartisan group that came up with a smaller number that is not enough, but you know what, I’d rather get that $600 into people’s pockets than to get zero. And so I didn’t have a vote on that, but I was for that.
MCD:
And that’s the nature of compromise, which according to pretty much everyone is what you have to do if you’re a legislator.
TLF:
Yeah. You get what you can now. And then you go back again later for more. The problem is that when people think that this is it. You know, our country is built on this idea of the pursuit of happiness, that you, we, should always be pushing for our society, our country, our democracy, to be better. That this is a journey and we are all on a journey together. There were some wonderful words—I know that there is an idea in Jewish tradition, in Buddhist tradition, in Catholic tradition, I’m Catholic, that think about the idea that you are on a journey and that journey is full of vulnerabilities, but it’s the journey itself which we are supposed to be on to try to make life better. I studied liberation theology when I was in college, and it is about trying to create the kingdom of God here on earth, not waiting for it.
We have a job to make life better here on earth. And I think that that’s where we’re at. And so that kind of idea is what I will take with me to Congress, this idea that we need to be moving towards and doing everything we can to make the world a better place. Not just for a small little who we believe small community is, but I really see us as being part of a whole extended outward sort of circle that encompasses everybody. We need to not just think about, like I can not just think about my own family, my own community, even my own district, even my own state of New Mexico, that we need to be thinking about how things affect those outside, because everybody affects everybody else. The United States is going to be a stronger place if the rest of the world is a safer place.
MCD:
Talk about your own core values and how you think about bringing them to the job.
TLF:
Never been asked that question. I’ve never, ever, never said, what are your core values? So, you know, one of my core values is actually community, that I believe that we are all stronger in community and that we as human beings actually thrive because of our ability to work with each other. That, you know, there’s, there was a great scientist who wrote some stuff about that, you know, we are at the species of working in common, right? That that’s how we have evolved. That is our strength. And now it is strengthening community. And so that when we think about things, we need to think about its impact on the community. And so I think community is one of my core values. I think that identity and cultural, both pride and respect is another core value that I am a proud Latina. I love my culture. I love my language. I love my music. I love my food. I love, our dance, I just love, lo que es ser Latina. I just love that. But I also love other people’s cultures. So I think a respect for cultural diversity, whether your culture comes from your roots and, and working the ranch in northern Colorado, to be in a Latino or a spanner in northern New Mexico, to being a Native American, to being a black American coming out of all, all of that hardship and pain and slavery and the evils by which this country has treated, black Americans over the centuries til today, but that within that there was some wonderful cultural aspects about who am I, who are, who are you that like, wow, that’s your community and your culture. And that this idea that we can have all these multitude of cultures and identities living together and making our life richer is another piece of, I think my core value of this respect for different cultures and identities.
And another one is really of service. I grew up with parents who believed in service, they never talked about it. They just did it. And it’s only now when people say, what are your values? It’s like, Oh, well, the idea of doing for others of being of service has always just been something that has been present in our family life, by example, never by explanation. Cause I think if you explain it, like even saying it now makes it seem less important, but I’ve always worked in, you know, whether it was helping start a bilingual theater company to, doing civil rights work, to in college, being very active in some of the social political issues of the day. It’s just been something that I’ve always done. That’s what makes me happy. Different things make different people happy though. And so I recognize that this is one of mine, but different people give in different ways.
And I also respect that among others. So I think maybe another core value is this idea of respecting others’ roles that they uniquely play. Mine is unique to me. Others provide service through being a teacher, through being a business owner. And you know, I’m a big believer of businesses, I help start them. So this respect for others’ contributions to our society is another, I think, core value. I’ve never been asked that question before, so I never had to quit think about it.
MCD:
So what are you most excited about going to Washington? What are you most worried about?
TLF:
Well, I’m excited about getting work. I started this whole journey because I thought there was a lot of hard, good transformative work to be had. And I think it’s going to happen. That we’re going to start doing that work.
We don’t know the conditions right now as you and I are talking. We don’t know whether Democrats or Republicans will hold the Senate. But whoever does, it just means that the strategy will be a little different. But the idea that we need to address some major, major crises is a lot of work. What I’m most worried about is I don’t exactly know what I’m doing yet. I’ve never yet been to a committee hearing. I know how to vote on things. I know how to give my input into things are happening. I know how to listen. I know how to listen really well and therefore learn. So I’m excited about doing it. But of course, like anytime you start anything new, you don’t really know how to do it until you start. What I am excited about, though, is that what a Congressperson does—there are many roles we play, one is we help people out through our constituent services and that’s huge, and we convene people and bring people together to talk—but we also like collect problems.
TLF:
And so I need to be listening to different problems that we have here in this district and listening to them and listening to them and we collect ideas of how we solve problems, right. And that that’s part of my job is now to like, have people come and share with me, what are the problems that we face and what are some of the ideas of how we actually get to fixing them? I’m not an expert on all the things that we need to get done. People in the community who are working on issues are, and they’re the experts both on the problems they face and often on the solutions that they need. And so that’s exciting that I’ll be able to be listening to so many different perspectives and that it’s going to be my job to kind of render those out and help turn those into hopefully solutions that can be enacted by Congress, either through appropriations or through tax issues or through new programs that we need to develop.
MCD:
Teresa, thank you so much.
TLF:
Yay. Thanks.
