Phill Casaus: With charm and preparation, Lorene Mills offers a unique report

Jan. 14—I'd kill to possess the contacts list on Lorene Mills' cellphone.

She knows everybody in New Mexico, or at least a few thousand real or wannabe somebodies — and they always pick up when she calls.

And that's just the locals; we're not even talking about her friends around the world who write books, star in movies or have films made about their lives.

Which begs the question: What in the world is Mills' secret? Better yet: How do you describe or explain the unique charm of Report From Santa Fe, her weekly interview show that airs on the state's public television stations?

Assuming your home has electricity, you've probably seen a million one-on-one interviewers over the years — from old-school heavyweights like Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters and Bob Costas to (Lord help us) the invasion of hairdo'd yahoos who populate cable news as if the TV sprung a leak of inane.

Mills is not like any of the above.

Instead, she is ... well, Lorene Mills, the 77-year-old grand dame of the state Capitol building whose bare-bones set, warm, motherly smile and willingness to let her subjects prattle on sometimes reveals nuggets you might not get anywhere else.

Once, she says Hollywood star James Cromwell (Babe, L.A. Confidential) cried on her set. Mills cried with him.

"It's just not in my nature to do an ambush interview or hostile interview," she says. "I mean, I will call them out on things gently; the velvet hammer. ... You are in somebody's living room. You don't want to have a fight in their living room."

Mills' battle armor, if you want to call it that, is a genuine interest in people and the things they care most about. Could be the governor. Might be a back-bench legislator from Truth or Consequences. Might be a visiting star. Might be an author, a self-promoter, a collector (or all three in one: She once interviewed the late and loquacious Forrest Fenn).

The name on the business card doesn't matter. Mills prepares for interviews, about 48 a year, the way quarterbacks study film before a Super Bowl.

For famed poet Margaret Atwood, she consumed 14 of her books.

"I live on coffee," Mills says. "That's probably not the best thing, but it sparks my mind."

Amped or not, Mills has been at this so long there's an entire generation of viewers who don't know about the guy who got her into this.

Lorene's late husband, Ernie Mills, a longtime newspaper and TV journalist in the state, was the grand dude of the Roundhouse for many years; a onetime newspaper editor who branched into radio and TV. During the horrific riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico near Santa Fe in 1980, he played a role in the release of some of the hostages taken during the nightmare.

Ernie died of pneumonia in 2003, and Lorene, who'd worked with him on the show and in other formats, sometimes serving as his editor, producer and camerawoman, took the baton.

It was an easy transition; Lorene is a natural, if for no other reason than her courtly manner, red hair and uncontrived curiosity comes through. She interviews pugnacious and occasionally pompous Democrats and Republicans with equal zeal — knowing, perhaps, better than most, that in politics, the distance between penthouse and outhouse in the Roundhouse is fairly small.

Longtime former legislator Dede Feldman, who's been a guest on the show several times, calls Mills' ability to draw substance from her subjects a matter of charm — and more.

"This is not the right quote or anything, but she could be you know, sort of like a Southern solicitous belle on the porch of Tara interviewing General Lee and asking him very polite questions that are disarming," Feldman says. "I think disarming might be the word for it."

If nothing else, Mills has parlayed compassion, or at least a willingness to listen, into access. She says her first interview after Ernie's death was then-Gov. Bill Richardson, a good get. But she doesn't just concentrate on the headliners. She's somehow found enough to talk about with a variety of people who aren't exactly A-1, A-block material. But they are New Mexico.

She says she still loves the job, the role, the legacy of carrying on for her late husband, who tried to shine a light in dark corners. She's psyched about an upcoming interview with former state Sen. John Arthur Smith, who once headed the Senate Finance Committee — and thus, the state's budget — in days when New Mexico wasn't swimming in oil money.

Smith may be old news, but he has insight. It's the currency Mills values most.

She has no thoughts of retiring; not now, when things are so interesting. She spends less time in her small spot at the Capitol, but if she needs something or someone, she has but to dial, and, snap, an interview materializes.

"I don't see any reason to stop," she says, with the gentleness you'd expect from Lorene Mills, but with a crackle that sparks the mind.

Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.