A New Hampshire politician says he's felt guilty for 48 years for getting a Native American vendor to drop her price for a bolo tie by 25 cents.

Burt Cohen, 58, recently wrote letters to the editors of several New Mexico papers to apologize for his own haggling plus "all the uncountable injustices perpetrated on Native Americans by white people."

"If that Indian woman still lives, please accept my truly humble apology," he wrote. "If she is no longer with us, I hope her family, and her people, will."

In a recent telephone interview from his home in New Castle, N.H., Cohen recalled a trip with his parents in July 1961 to Santa Fe where, he said, he was told the custom was to bargain with the Indians selling items on the portal of the Palace of the Governors.

"My family expected me to, and I felt that if I came back without having haggled, I wouldn't have done my job," he said. "I was only 10 years old at the time."

Cohen picked out a "handmade, necktie-like accessory" with a "handsome" stone, and when the vendor told him she wanted $1, he told her he only had 75 cents. After some back and forth, she agreed to sell it for 75 cents.

At that point, Cohen said, he pulled a dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to her. "She gave me a quarter back with a disgusted look on her face," he wrote in his letter. "The disgust became my own ever since that moment."

"I think it sparked a lot of values that sustained me," he said last week. "I hadn't been so aware of just the class differences and stereotypes about people."

Some Indian vendors on the portal of the Palace of the Governors say Cohen's apology is too little, too late.

Silver jeweler Michael Gorman said Saturday that haggling is an outdated custom that "mildly offends" him, although he's heard tour guides advise tourists to bargain.

The 49-year-old Navajo/Ottowa man, who lives in Albuquerque and has been making his living as a jeweler for 30 years, said if he went to suppliers and offered less than the going price for silver, "they'd laugh in my face."

"In a lot of places, there's no regulation, so you can go literally anywhere and purchase stuff yourself and resell it at markup," Gorman said. "We don't have that option. We have to make it by hand. We do all our purchasing, producing, selling — everything, the entire process — and that makes us different than people who perhaps have a way to negotiate and bargain."

Cohen, a Democrat, served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1990 to 2004, and became Senate majority leader. He said he makes a living from his family's three small strip malls in Massachusetts and does a twice-a-week talk-radio show called Portside.

In 2004, he sought the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Judd Gregg. But Cohen dropped out of the race after his campaign manager pleaded guilty to overstating the amount of cash on hand by $300,000 to the Federal Election Commission. According to New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader, Cohen said he would like to run against Gregg in 2010.

Cohen, whose Web site pictures himself with President Barack Obama as well as two unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates, Al Gore and George McGovern, said in an interview that he wrote the letter because "I hate to see injustice," and he thinks "everybody deserves a square deal."

Asked about vote-trading in politics, he said, "I never liked that. I know that does often happen, but I like to have my integrity about me . ... It stretches the edges of ethics, I think, to trade votes for things. I like to consider myself ethical."

Other Indian vendors, who did not want their names used, said they often offer discounts for cash, but found Cohen's original offer insulting and his apology questionable.

"Doing artwork takes a lot of work," said one. "It takes time if you want something nice."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.