As a real-estate agent running for the Santa Fe City Council, Robbie Dobyns says he has been branded with labels that don't fit. He's not rich, not backed by big business and, he contends, not tied to developers.

Dobyns says his true characteristics — a local since second grade, a father of two daughters, a community volunteer — emerge as people come to understand him.

Dobyns, 59, first smiles his toothy grin, then laughs when asked if he is "The Realtor Candidate."

"No. I'm not. Obviously I can't hide from it, that's what I've been doing for the last two decades," he said. "But I'm local. I'm old."

Dressed in well-worn cowboy boots, corduroy pants and a striped, collared cotton shirt, he offers fresh espresso to visitors to his Palace Avenue office, where he works at Santa Fe Realty Partners. Instead of responding to a reporter's outstretched hand in greeting, he offers a quick hug.

"I'm informal," he says, offering a leather chair in the freshly painted outbuilding of what he says formerly was a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers.

While his answers to questions about his political ideas are sometimes short, Dobyns waxes long about the history of buildings and his mostly Western-rooted family history. He brags about his daughters — Ayesha, a graduate student studying in Hong Kong, and Andrea, a Santa Fe city police officer.

Dobyns, a graduate of Santa Fe High School and The University of New Mexico, said he's a firm believer in a "good book education." He did post-graduate studies on a philosophy called "historicism." His conversation is peppered with words such as fiduciary, antithetical and proletariat.

He uses self-depreciating humor. On the topic of having a daughter on the front lines of law enforcement, Dobyns says: "I have learned a lot of things in life. I am pretty slow and dim-witted, but one of the main things I have learned is, you don't tell women what to do. That's just one of the rules of life."

Dobyns says his children are one reason he's seeking office. Like other longtime Santa Feans, he says, he feels lucky that half of his progeny still live in the city.

"One of the things that brought me to this race was a little selfish. It was missing children," he said. "I was seeing the best and the brightest of youth leave Santa Fe and never come back, and it was breaking my heart. Because, all of the sudden, you are a bunch of old geezers like me, and we are not the future."

As a Realtor, Dobyns specializes in commercial leases but also helps clients buy and sell houses. He served as the president of the local real-estate association and has made many friends in the field.

Lorin Abbey, a broker at Sotheby's International Realty who formerly worked with Dobyns, said he acted as a mentor when she started out in the business a few years ago. "I appreciated Robbie's native sensibilities," she said. "I liked him right away because he is just very down to earth."

Abbey said the two learned they had a common childhood ranching history, she at her family home in Stanley and Dobyns at the ranch of his uncle, Alva Simpson, which later became Eldorado subdivision.

If elected, Dobyns has said, his first goal would be to work on a sustainable affordable-housing policy.

The candidate says he wouldn't be a puppet for the real-estate industry. He said he realized early in his candidacy he would get that tag. He heard insinuations that his campaign account would be stuffed with money from developers, speculators and their brokers. "There is this insinuation that there is all this money flowing into the campaign," he said, "and that is not true and that is not factual."

In the first round of required campaign-finance statements filed last month, Dobyns reported about half as much money as his opponent. But his money came from two major, real-estate-related sources. He got $2,413 from the New Mexico Realtors political action committee and $1,500 from Santa Fe Realty Partners.

Dobyns said he hopes to run a "very low dollar" campaign. "If I don't resonate within the voting community," he explained, "then I don't deserve to be even looked at, period."

Although he has professional ties to the business community, Dobyns said, he also has connections through his work with various nonprofits. He serves on boards of the KSFR public radio station and Open Hands, a program that serves the elderly.

ROBERT E. DOBYNS JR.

Age: 59

Birthplace: Pensacola, Fla.; moved to Santa Fe in second grade

Education: Wood-Gormley Elementary School, Harrington Jr. High and Santa Fe High; University of New Mexico bachelor's degree in 1972; studied for an advanced degree in historicism at Boston College until 1973

Occupation: Licensed real-estate broker

Work experience: His longest tenure was with French & French Fine Properties; currently an associate broker with Santa Fe Realty Partners. Served as regional vice president of the state Realtors association as well as president of the Santa Fe Realtors association; certified to teach Diversity in Real Estate through the state of New Mexico and teach locally on Fair Housing Law and Cultural Awareness.

Political and civic experience: Serves on the boards of public radio station KSFR and Open Hands, which serves the elderly.

Personal: Divorced father of two adult daughters, Ayesha and Andrea Dobyns. His dog, Lucia, is a pit-bull/dalmation mix.

Have you ever been arrested? "During the invasion of Cambodia and the Kent State massacre, I found myself incarcerated but without charges."

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