| Q+A |
fred nathan
Thin k Ne w Mex ico’s orig inal brain i n t e r v i e w by robe r t maye r • photo by norah le vi ne
Ten years ago, attorney Fred Nathan founded Think New Mexico—in his Santa Fe bedroom. Today the think tank has a prominent Board of Directors, an energetic staff, a growing endowment, offices a literal stone’s throw from the Roundhouse, and an impressive list of accomplishments for the public good. What were you doing before you started Think New Mexico, and where did you get the idea?
I was special counsel to then–Attorney General Tom Udall. Part of my job was to shepherd his ambitious legislative package through the legislature. It wasn’t always very pretty. So I saw a need for a results-oriented think tank which would drain the politics out of some of our political debates with a bipartisan approach and place the focus on comprehensive, sustainable solutions. How did your wife feel about sharing her bedroom with a think tank?
About the same way she feels about the need for the separation of church and state. She helpfully reminds me when work is invading our family time and, of course, she is always right. The first issue you tackled was getting all-day kindergarten approved in New Mexico. Why was that your top priority, and how is it working out nine years later?
Think New Mexico was founded with the goal of improving New Mexico in some of the areas in which it consistently ranks at or near the bottom in the nation. The obvious place to start is improving public education. Plus, we wanted to begin at the beginning, which brought us inevitably to the need to make full-day kindergarten accessible to every child in New Mexico.
october/november
2009
santa fean
17