By: Jose Z. Garcia

I met John A. Smith early in 1980, probably at a Democratic Party function.  We had just been elected Democratic county chairs of Luna and Doña Ana counties, respectively.  John and I formed a small group of Democratic Party chairs from Hidalgo, Luna, Grant, Doña Ana, Sierra and Otero counties.  We would meet a few times a year and gossip about politics and at statewide conventions tried to maximize our weak clout within the party.

That year we faced a baptism by fire, a series of events that surely helped galvanize John’s resolve to think for himself in the face of heavy political pressure, a trait that would later earn him kudos as a statesman.  Harold Runnels, a conservative Democratic congressman from Hobbs, died of cancer in August; elections were in November.  Republicans, satisfied with Harold’s conservative voting record, had not run a candidate in the primary.  Despite strong public opposition and warnings from Southern party officials, the Democratic Party Central Committee—dominated by liberal Northerners—selected David King, from Santa Fe County, outside the district, to replace Harold as the only person on the ballot.  The public was outraged; Joe Skeen ran as a write-in, and won in a close race.  He remained Congressman until 2002.  The lesson from voters was clear:  voters are the constituents, not party officials.  Years later, when pressured by Roundhouse leaders, governors, and lobbyists to slip in a yes vote on a bill his constituents would not approve of, or the state could not afford, I pictured John remembering that moment of democratic action.

After he was elected to the NM Senate in 1988 John quickly made a name for himself as one of the few senators who truly understood where state monies were parked and the complex process by which a state budget is formed.  I was teaching a course on New Mexico government at NMSU and, realizing I knew no more about any of this than a chapter in the text I assigned, I asked him to explain to me and my students how it worked.  The notion that there is a huge difference to future budgets between a recurring expenditure and a one-time expenditure during a legislative session, was new to me, as it is today for many a freshman legislator, and I confess it took several visits to my class from John before I felt I had a basic understanding of the complexities by which funds in the state’s coffers are converted into which kinds of expenditures.

In 2002 Republican Joe Skeen retired from Congress.  John ran for the seat, opposed by Steve Pierce.  The Pew Foundation commissioned me to write about this race—they were interested in congressional races with no incumbent–so I had a ringside seat.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in return for promising a hefty sum of campaign money, forced John to select from five campaign managers they had vetted, all from out-of-state.  None had worked in New Mexico.  Hispanic voters comprised about a third of the vote then, and tended to vote Democratic, but needed to be approached differently in each region.  The managers he was offered knew nothing of this.  The race was close until the end and I was proud of John, who began the race with limited speaking skills, but toward the end sounded every inch a congressman.  The DCCC, however, reneged on their promise to send money during the last few weeks.  The DCCC-vetted manager from New Jersey effectively suspended the campaign the last ten days and the momentum was lost.  Pierce won the race and John went back to his senate seat in Santa Fe.

It was, I believe, Bill Richardson who came up with Dr. No as a nickname for John, quickly picked up by media.  Richardson, who grew up in Mexico City, was an early example of the recent turn to autocratic rule in the US.  Hugely talented, larger than life, hungry for headlines, and never hesitant to ask someone to throw him a fundraiser, Richardson insisted on big-ticket items like the Railrunner and the Spaceport—both long-term financial drains—and he managed to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.  When John—Chair of Senate Finance, one of the most powerful positions in the legislature—spoke truth to power in public about the state’s inability to pay for imprudent levels of spending, Richardson called him Dr. No.  I saw the nickname as a badge of honor:  it takes courage to say no when the pressure is on and when those who agree with you rely on you to say no.

When I became a cabinet secretary in the first Susana Martinez administration, I found John’s door always open.  Despite our long friendship, he treated me exactly as he had treated Richarson and everyone else.  When he disagreed, he was kind and friendly but he tended not to budge and he told you why.  It was clear he enjoyed immense respect from his fellow legislators, even when disagreements were sharp. 

In recent years hyper-partisanship moved stealthily into the Roundhouse.  Several legislators, faithful to the moderate-to-conservative views of their constituents, were targeted in primary races by fellow Democrats from the progressive wing of the party, often using out-of-state money.  John was one of the victims of this highly un-democratic movida from liberal Democrats, many of whom do not hesitate to complain loudly about un-democratic tendencies within national Republican circles.  John took his loss stoically, in stride, and with grace.  Vaya con Dios, John.