in Nation's Senate Races

NEW MEXICO'S politics, to the uninitiated observer, are odd, even contradictory. The state has a heavy population of national minorities, with American Indians and Mexican-Americans logging in at 7 and 33 percent respectively. The state is also the country's seventh poorest, with 17.4 percent of its residents living below the poverty line. One would expect a heavy liberal bias among the state's elected officials.

Compared to the rest of the sunbelt, New Mexico is indeed liberal, but Republicans here have had some success in counteracting the heavily Democratic Hispanic vote. The reason: the conservative economic interests which dominate the state in the form of a powerful energy and military industrial establishment. The state is home to two major research facilities (Los Alamos and Sandia Labs) and two Air Force bases, and uranium mining is a major source of revenue.

Not coincidentally, New Mexico's senior senator, Pete V. Domenici, sits on the Energy and Natural Resources and Environment and Public Works committees. He's also chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, where he has demonstrated his dislike for federal deficits. Domenici is the most powerful senator New Mexico has had in quite some time, and his state likes him alot.

Despite Domenici's popularity, state Democratic Party leaders had hoped they could give him a run for his money this time around. The Democrats have become increasingly adept with voter registration drives, efforts which paid off handsomely in 1982 when they reclaimed one Senate seat, won the governorship, and gained more congressional votes statewide than the GOP. The leadership was banking on a tough fight for Domenici's seat by Judy Pratt, a charasmatic former state senator who would be New Mexico's first woman senator.

Their hopes are not to be, however, as all signs point to a landslide Domenici reelection. The Pratt campaign, hampered by inexperience and unable to get more than lukewarm support from moderate and conservative party brass, has not been able to get off the ground. Domenici, whose $2 million coffers outnumbers ten-times the Pratt treasury, is getting nearly 80 percent of the vote from all the pollsters.

"WE JUST HAVEN'T had the money to get the issues accross," posits Pratt's Campaign Manager Anne Watkins. But it's hard to know what happened to the Pratt drive. After an exciting primary victory and endorsements from the state's top Democrats, the campaign has fizzled. The endorsements themselves may have hurt.

Though 63 percent of the state's one million residents are registered Democrats, Reagan will probably carry the state's five electoral votes It hasn't helped Pratt to be tied to the sinking ship of Walter Mondale.

Ironically, another drawback may have been the strong ideological and party link Pratt shares with Gov. Toney Anaya, one of the nation's most liberal. Since he took over in 1982, Anaya has had to defend himself against a host of criticisms from the public and state legislators--ranging from his taking too active a role in national Hispanic politics at the expense of getting things done at home, to his refusal to enforce the death penalty. Some observers believe the governor is proving an albatross around Pratt's neck.

All this is very odd, though, given that it is only two years since the governor took office after campaigning vigorously on a liberal platform, letting the public know that he would play the fitting role as the nation's only Hispanic governor if elected. It was Anaya too who came close to upsetting Domenici himself in 1978. The Pratt campaign, moreover, claims their issues polls of New Mexico voters show them more closely aligned to Anaya and Pratt.

But no one ever said explaining politics in the year of Reagan was easy. In New Mexico, though, things may not be all that complicated. Pete, as Domenici is affectionately known to his constituents, has carved out a powerful reputation for his skilled bipartisan approach to the budget. Citizens in the state know that. They like it. And while most of them could probably care less about what goes on day to day on Capitol Hill, they do like seeing their senator a couple of times a week on the evening news.