Member DedeFeldman

Dede Feldman has had a varied career as a journalist, high school and university teacher, and the owner of a small public relations business. As a state senator from District 13 in Albuquerque’s North Valley from 1997-2012, Feldman had a big impact on the lives of women, children and people struggling to make ends meet. She is the sponsor of scores of successful initiatives including the “Graduated Drivers License” system for teens, the Nurse Advice Hotline, a mastectomy bill that mandates insurance companies cover a minimum 48-hr. hospital stay, as well as the creation of a Brain Injury Services Fund for people with head injuries. She also sponsored a “Do Not Call” bill in 2003 prohibiting unwanted telephone solicitations, an ATV safety bill in 2005 and the state’s Senior Prescription Drug Discount program (2002).

The long-time Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, she was a champion of health care reform, long before the Affordable Care Act, laying the groundwork in New Mexico with insurance parity for women and people with disabilities. She passed laws toughening insurance rate reviews, and made it harder for insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. She also played a key role in ethics and campaign finance reform, passing limits on campaign contributions, public financing for the state’s higher courts and its Pubic Regulation Commission, a requirement for the disclosure of contributions on the web, and open legislative conference committees.

She passed the state’s only “pay- to play” bill in recent memory. She currently serves on the boards of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, Health Insight New Mexico, and the Robert Wood Johnson’s Aligning Forces for Quality.

Feldman holds both a BA and an MA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. She also attended Gettysburg College (1964-1965) and Westtown School (graduated 1964). In one of her first efforts at grassroots community development, when Dede was a teacher, she and her husband led a group of students on a trip to Uganda in East Africa where they worked with Africans to repair and build additions to local schools. Dede has lived in the North Valley of Albuquerque since 1976 in a solar adobe home she and her husband built as an experiment in passive solar design.