LOS ALAMOS — Pete Domenici's term in the U.S. Senate — the longest and most recognized in New Mexico's history — will end Jan. 4.

But for the 76-year-old former math teacher turned career politician, one part of the job won't really stop.

It's the worrying. He'll keep fretting about one of the state's most pressing issues: What will become of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"I don't know exactly how it's going to be funded, and that's enough for any worrywart," he said in a recent interview at the Los Alamos airport, where he took part in a land-transfer dedication during what the hilltop community dubbed Domenici Day.

The Republican last year announced he has an incurable brain disease and wouldn't seek election to a seventh term.

So while others in the Democrat-controlled Congress will now wrestle with what the national laboratory should be doing, Domenici, for years the lab's budget master, will sit on the sidelines.

And that might be the hardest part of all for the senator who has been at the center of so much of New Mexico's history for so long.

The opening of a nuclear waste storage facility in Carlsbad?

Domenici was there.

A federal law-enforcement training center in Artesia?

Domenici's name is stamped onto the main complex where Border Patrol agents are taught.

Untold millions for the state's national laboratories?

Domenici played a key role.

Federal energy policy and mental-health acts?

Again, the son of Italian immigrants who was born and raised in Albuquerque had his hands on the wheel.

Millions more for New Mexico's highways, its border crossings, its commuter train?

Domenici, Domenici, Domenici.

So which of the thousands of projects represents the legacy of the state's senior senator?

It's too hard to pick just one thing, he said. But if he had to, it might be science — a common theme behind the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a uranium-enrichment project and others he listed when asked in late October.

"Put them together there, maybe my legacy is science, that I love science, I love big science when we can make it work and apply it," he said. "During my lifetime, my time here, we've changed New Mexico. It's moving in that direction where it could be a high-tech, high science state."

But, he said, taking in a deep breath and looking around the room, "We've got to run uphill because we've got an awful lot of this opposition."

Domenici, who wrote two books on energy, sounds like a science professor as much as a U.S. senator. As he talks to a reporter about a nutrino project at WIPP, he spells out the word — n-u-t-r-i-n-o — almost faster than the reporter can write it.

Longtime friend Bill Keleher said Domenici's legacy might not be in a certain project he accomplished for New Mexico, but instead in how he worked to support the state.

"I think his greatest accomplishment for Albuquerque and all of New Mexico is his advocacy," Keleher said.

"You can't separate it out, whether it's Sandia or Los Alamos ... when you saw what he would do, he would do whatever was in the best interest of New Mexico. But he'd always consider the nation as a whole, too."

For all his knowledge, his powerful positions and his prestige, Domenici is also just the average guy, said lawyer Marco Gonzales, who was an aide to the senator for 10 years.

"The times I'm with him, he's as apt to want to go to Lotaburger," he said. "You have this man who is one of the most powerful in the Senate and he is just as happy to be in those circles as he is to be in Lotaburger."

Domenici, who pitched a season for the Albuquerque Dukes, ran for governor in 1970, losing to Democrat Bruce King. Two years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he stayed, eventually becoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

In his Washington office, he kept an old-fashioned washboard, a stark reminder of the rural life many in New Mexico live.

Two women who lived in Catron County in 1990 gave him the item during a meeting of the local Rural Electric Authority in Ruidoso.

Because of infrastructure improvements Domenici worked on getting funded in the nearby rural areas, the women no longer needed the washboard, because they now could use washing machines.

Domenici hung the washboard on his wall and "always remembered that," Gonzales said. He will now take the washboard home to Albuquerque as a memento.

Like the washboard, Domenici liked the more simple things in life, including traditional land line phones.

During a trip to the Paradise Hills area of Albuquerque a few years ago on which Keleher accompanied him, Domenici received a cell-phone message but wasn't sure how to retrieve it. Keleher wasn't either, so the pair, after stopping in a McDonald's for a yogurt, went to the nearest Verizon store for assistance.

No one in the store recognized Domenici, Keleher said, something that to this day amazes him.

"It was just humorous to me that we were in that crowded store and I thought he would have been recognized," he said.

Domenici didn't mind a bit, Keleher said.

Those back in Washington, however, knew Domenici and were trying to reach him. The phone message Domenici had been trying to retrieve was from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

For critics, Domenici's legacy might be his very use of the telephone.

Shortly before the 2006 election, when U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, a Republican, was locked in a re-election battle against Democrat Patricia Madrid, both Wilson and Domenici made calls to then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias asking about the status of a case against former state Senate president Manny Aragon. Iglesias later said he felt he was being pressured to indict Aragon before the election. Wilson and Domenici denied pressuring Iglesias.

In a letter to Domenici in April of this year, the Senate Ethics Committee found "no substantial evidence to determine that you attempted to improperly influence an ongoing investigation."

"The committee does find that you should have known that a federal prosecutor receiving such a telephone call, coupled with an approaching election which may have turned on or been influenced by the prosecutor's actions ... created an appearance of impropriety that reflected unfavorably on the Senate."

At the time, Domenici issued a statement in which he said he hadn't attempted to improperly influence the investigation when he called Iglesias.

He talked about the scandal very little after that.

Other talk about Domenici's legacy focuses on the big projects he's helped statewide. But he said, there's something to be said for thinking locally, too.

"That's without taking my city of Albuquerque and all the things we've done there," he said.

Domenici, who taught math at Albuquerque's Garfield Junior High before starting a law practice in 1958, became Albuquerque City Commission chairman in the late '60s, something akin to being mayor these days.

Current Mayor Martin Chávez said he's grateful that Domenici, whose job was to represent New Mexicans statewide, grew up in Albuquerque.

"He understood our issues intimately and that saves a whole lot of time," Chávez said. "He understood them personally and on an emotional basis as well. You never had to make the case you had to make to someone who wasn't from here."

As for Domenici's work for the city, Chávez, a Democrat, said the senator should be remembered for his dedication to water issues.

"He absolutely had a huge impact on water and the battle for San Juan-Chama in particular," Chávez said, referring to the city's project to treat river water for household use.

"During my tenure as mayor, that's certainly his big contribution," he said.

As the conversation with a reporter ends, Domenici in a way that's both bossy and grandfatherly, wraps up the interview.

"OK," he says. "You've got too much from me already. I hope you write it well."

With that, he scoots himself to the edge of his seat and stands up, slower than he used to, and walks away, headed to a luncheon held to celebrate his work.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog, Green Chile Chatter, at www.santafenewmexican.com.