Tom Udall

Today our guest is Fred Nathan, founder and executive director of Think New Mexico, an independent nonpartisan think tank he established in 1999.

Before founding Think New Mexico, Fred served for seven years as special counsel to New Mexico Attorney General Tom Udall, where he directed the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, resulting in a settlement of one and a quarter billion dollars.

Over the past 27 years, Think New Mexico has helped bring about significant public policy reforms, from repealing the state's tax on groceries to expanding full-day kindergarten.

More recently, Fred and his colleagues have played an important role in advancing healthcare reforms aimed at addressing New Mexico's shortage of doctors and other medical professionals.

So, it's kind of returning power to the people.

And, uh, thinking of money out of politics, it's always seemed to me a shame that when Tom Udall was a senator, his constitutional amendment that would've reversed Citizens United did not get as much attention and didn't get passed, because that would've made a huge difference across the country.

Sure did.

Yeah.

I worked at the Longworth building.

so uh i would go under the heart building which was a senate building and i'd ride kind of this underground subway that they have just for um like basically like government staff and i would ride it pop out at the capitol walk across the capitol go down work in the longworth building worked on the fourth floor uh for tom udall and i would constituents would fly out from all over and i would give them tours of the capitol building So I did that.

And then another different time when I lived in Alexandria, I worked in Federal Triangle in that vicinity.

And I did a bunch of stuff there.