Looking Out for No. 1

By Susan Tifft

Toney Anaya has high hopes for Hispanics--and for himself

New Mexico is known for its relaxed and relatively conservative state government. But there was nothing mellow or complacent about the New Mexican who addressed the liberal Americans for Democratic Action in Los Angeles last week. "The hands that pick our lettuce, the hands that pick our cotton, are the hands that can pick the next President," thundered Governor Toney Anaya. "I will travel the length and width of this great nation as many times as I have to to ensure that Ronald Reagan is retired in 1984."

A scant ten months after taking office as the nation's highest-ranking Hispanic and its only Hispanic Governor, Anaya, 42, has established himself as a colorful and controversial activist with national ambitions. In New Mexico, a state with a weak Governor system, he has already earned a reputation as an ironfisted leader. Nationally he has gained visibility as chairman of Hispanic Force '84, an effort by elected and appointed Hispanic officials to mobilize the nation's approximately 6 million voting-age Hispanics into an influential force in the Democrats' 1984 presidential campaign. Says Anaya: "My political options in New Mexico are limited. I don't want to stop here."

Born the seventh of ten children in the small town of Moriarty in central New Mexico, Anaya grew up in a three-room adobe house with a dirt floor, outdoor plumbing and no electricity or telephone. His father was a laborer and broncobuster; his mother spoke almost no English and was only semiliterate in Spanish. By the age of seven he was working before and after school at his brother's grocery store as well as milking the family cows and chopping wood. "I've been on the same treadmill ever since," he says. "I've never learned to relax."

After he was elected New Mexico's attorney general in 1974, Anaya transformed the office from a sleepy political backwater into one of the most visible and independent positions in the state by crusading against white-collar crime and championing consumer and environmental issues. In 1982 he was elected Governor by a margin of 25,000 votes out of 406,000 cast, considered a landslide in New Mexico. Under state law, however, Anaya cannot succeed himself, a fact that has made him work feverishly to put his populist stamp on state government and consolidate power in the Governor's office. He has persuaded the state legislature to place more state policy and planning functions under his control. To keep the bureaucracy in line, Anaya is in the process of naming six "policy aides" to be his personal liaisons with the state's 13 cabinet secretaries.

Predictably, his aggressive tactics have drawn fire. But it is his appearances across the country to promote Hispanic Force '84, and some say himself, that particularly irk New Mexicans. "There is a feeling out there that he is not taking care of things at home," admits Harvey Fruman, Anaya's executive assistant and former law partner. In a single week last August, Anaya appeared on Night Line, Meet the Press and The Mac Neil-Lehrer Report. Cars in New Mexico sport bumper stickers that say TONEY, PHONE HOME. Anaya is unapologetic. Nevertheless, to allay the criticism, he has canceled some trips outside New Mexico and stepped up his public appearances instate.

But he is unlikely to absent himself from the circuit for long. Since his Governor's stint ends in January 1987, and the only near-term Senate contest would pit him against popular Incumbent Republican Pete Domenici, Anaya personally has a great deal riding on a Democratic victory in 1984. "In the short term, my involvement with the Hispanic Force is for the party and for the state of New Mexico and for Hispanics," he says. "But in the long term, the involvement is for myself. If a Democrat gets elected President, it opens up a lot of possibilities for me." He is known to aspire to a Cabinet post, perhaps U.S. Attorney General or Secretary of the Interior, or even the vice presidency. "I'm not promoting myself for the ticket," he maintains, "but if a Hispanic were considered, I would be one of them."

The main goal of Hispanic Force '84 is as ambitious as its chairman: to register 1 million new Hispanics by November 1984, bringing the total to 4.4 million (4.5% of the projected 1984 voter rolls). Coordinating the national sign-up campaign is the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in San Antonio, a nominally nonpartisan group credited with great success in registering Hispanics in electorally critical Texas and California. Hispanics are concentrated in six populous states -- California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas -- that cast 173 electoral votes, about three-fifths of the 270 needed to elect a President. On paper they have enormous clout: in California, for example, which has 47 electoral votes, 19% of the population is Hispanic. But the raw numbers over state their political strength. Nearly one-third of voting-age Hispanics nationwide are resident aliens and thus ineligible to vote. Of those who are eligible, slightly more than half are registered, and their turnout rate, 30%, is 23 percentage points below the national average. More over, Hispanics, who can be Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, or South or Central Americans, are diverse culturally and economically. Though they are overwhelmingly Democratic, they rarely vote as a bloc.

Indeed, in 1980, 30% of the Hispanic vote went to Ronald Reagan. In 1984 the G.O.P. is hoping for close to 35%, most of it from upwardly mobile Hispanics in the Sunbelt. The Republicans, like the Democrats, are heavily courting the Hispanic vote: Reagan recently proclaimed a National Hispanic Heritage Week, and the G.O.P. has established Viva '84, a program aimed at registering half a million new Hispanic Republicans.

Despite their fragmented power and loyalties, Anaya feels that Hispanics, hurt by Reagan's programs and galvanized by a national movement of mostly Democratic Hispanic leaders, will make a difference for the Democrats in next fall's election.

"Hispanics have been awakened to the in fluence they can have," he says. "The time and the issues are right in 1984." If they are, Toney Anaya hopes to ride them all the way to Washington.

-- By Susan Tifft.

Reported by Robert C. Wurmstedt/ Santa Fe, with other bureaus

With reporting by Robert C. Wurmstedt This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.