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a tall order

Bill Richardson may be the most qualified candidate on the democratic ballot, but does he stand a chance?

People who know politics agree that Bill Richardson, the man, has all the qualities Americans require of their presidential candidates. “Nice guy. Very tall. He’s much, much taller than John Edwards,” observes Jorge Mursuli, executive director of People for the American Way’s Democracia USA project, devoted to enfranchise Hispanic voters. “Have we ever had a short president?” Not in the television era, at least, and rarely before it.
Richardson would dwarf the last two tall presidents, even if résumés were the only measure of them. He has more experience at different levels of government and foreign relations than either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton had before occupying the White House, and more than any of the 2008 contenders, Democrat or Republican. Richardson was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1997, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to 1998, U.S. energy secretary from 1998 to 2001. He’s been governor of New Mexico since 2003. What Barack Obama couldn’t do with a résumé like that up his sleeve.
The 59-year-old governor of the Land of Enchantment can also deliver a smart, droll, inspiring speech, like the one that prompted considerable buzz in the hallways at the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. in January. “Now, I could tell you, in a positive way, that we need a Democratic nominee who’s brokered international agreements, understands the Middle East, and fought global warming,” Richardson mused from the podium. “A nominee who’s served as a governor, balanced budgets, created jobs, covered people with health care, and turned an economy around. In fact, I think that sounds pretty good. But the truth is, most of America doesn’t want to hear another political speech right now. And honestly, I don’t blame them. They see enough politics in their nightly news, in the grim statistics of a war gone horribly wrong. A war that’s mostly about politics and posturing and saving face. And that’s the worst sort of politics imaginable.”
He told the audience the United States should assemble Iraqi Sunni and Shiite leaders for a national reconciliation conference, and organize a regional conference of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria.
“I know the usual rap on governors, that we don’t know anything about foreign affairs,” Richardson continued. “Well, maybe you can say that about governors from Texas. But not this governor. Last December, I was visited by a delegation of North Koreans seeking my advice before the disarmament talks. They wanted to know how in the world they’re supposed to work with an administration that thinks ‘axis of evil’ is a bargaining position. When I visited Darfur last month and negotiated a cease-fire, I saw thousands of widows and fatherless children trying to escape the genocide, waiting in line in 100 degree heat for a month. They wanted to know why it was taking the United States so long to do something.”
The governor also recited a litany of accomplishments in New Mexico that he thinks are needed nationally. Tax credits to create jobs and promote renewable energy, more money for schools and teachers, health insurance for children and domestic partners of state employees, lower health care costs for low-income families, tougher standards to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and other causes of global warming.
“He has experience in domestic policy, he’s been a governor. He’s done a whole bunch of international things. He’s also a very straightforward guy. I think he’s a hell of a candidate,” says Alfredo Duran, a former Florida Democratic Party chairman. “He’s probably the most qualified of all the people out there right now.”
Even party stalwarts who back other candidates can’t deny his potential. “Richardson is definitely someone who needs to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. He will have a lot of appeal to a lot of important constituencies,” says Sergio Bendixen, a Miami-based pollster and strategist who will be working as a senior consultant for the Hillary Clinton campaign’s Hispanic strategy..
Some party insiders think Richardson could even pose a problem for Clinton, Edwards, and Obama in Florida, one of the most crucial states in presidential politics, because it’s a major source of campaign contributions and the venue of an early primary. “Because of his breadth of experience at different levels of government he would have the ability to raise money,” says Fred Balsera, a political consultant specializing in Hispanic communications in Florida. “He could do well here.” About 12 percent of the state’s electorate is Hispanic, which would favor Richardson, who is Mexican American and the only Hispanic in the race. The son of an Anglo banker from Boston and a Mexican woman who worked in the banking industry, he spent part of his childhood in Mexico City. He graduated from a prep school in Concord, New Hampshire and Tufts University in the Boston suburbs. “He’s East Coast establishment with Southwest cred. Southwest Hispanic cred,” says Mursuli. “That’s a distinct advantage he has.”
That heritage would almost guarantee Richardson an even better showing in another pivotal area for presidential contests: the Southwest. Political experts view New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and parts of Arizona as a burgeoning swing region, because of its large numbers of independent voters and increasing Hispanic population.
“It’s a given that you can have a Democrat win in the Northeast but to have a Democrat who can win in the Southwest, I think that makes him formidable,” Balsera says.
There’s just one huge problem. Hardly anyone thinks he has a prayer of becoming the Democratic nominee.
“He’s not going to beat Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. Because he’s unknown. Nobody knows who he is outside of New Mexico,” says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta.
“I love Bill Richardson, he’s a friend of mine,” says Duran. “The problem is that I think the Democrats can win the presidency in 2008, but I think the guy who can do it is Al Gore.”
“Obviously my feeling is that Sen. Clinton is going to be the nominee,” Bendixen says.
But wait a minute. Why can’t a tall, gregarious, tremendously experienced governor from New Mexico get known enough to win his party’s nomination? Because, analysts and party insiders say, it takes $100 million to pound even a well-known presidential candidate’s image into vast numbers of American psyches. And Richardson won’t be able to drum up that much.
“It takes a very special set of circumstances, but also a very special network of supporters, to do that,” Bendixen explains. “The only reason that Sen. Clinton can do it is that obviously she comes from eight years at the White House and has a very strong support base in New York. You can’t compare that with a governor of New Mexico, who has by definition a very limited financial power base in New Mexico. But he also hasn’t had the national exposure in terms of building a network.” Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, and ex-Iowa governor Tom Vilsack (now out of the race) fall into the same category.
“He may be able to raise some money, especially from interests in New Mexico or groups that he’s dealt with at the national level,” Black concurs. “But he’s not going to be able to raise the kind of money that Hillary Clinton, or Obama, or John Edwards could raise.”
Unless, of course, people send him tens of millions of dollars via the Internet. “That’s how [Howard] Dean did it. I have a feeling that Sen. Obama is going to raise a lot of money through the Internet. Richardson’s got time to figure it out,” Bendixen says. “If he’s able to come up with that kind of financing his chances would improve substantially.”
Richardson says he thinks he’ll have all the financing he needs, when he needs it. “Our system gives all of the candidates a fair hearing in the four earliest states,” he says, referring to the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. “I’m going to raise enough money. I’m not going to raise the most money, at least not early in the race, but I’m going to have enough money to compete strongly in the early states, and you know whoever does well there can raise the money to win it all.”
To do so, he will first have to catch the younger, greener, but far more popular Obama. Obama is a threat to Clinton and Edwards because people see him as an outsider who transcends the partisan practices of Washington and was unequivocally opposed to starting a war in Iraq. When asked how he intends to steal Obama’s thunder, the governor replied: “I’m running for president because I believe that I am the person best qualified to get this great country back on the right track. I have a proven track record. I have governed my state in a bipartisan manner, working across the aisle to cut taxes, fight crime, and create jobs. And I was proud to get 40 percent of the Republican vote in a red state. We broke years of partisan gridlock to move New Mexico forward. On Iraq, I have the diplomatic experience to solve this problem. Diplomacy is the surest way to get us out of Iraq–not just opposition to the war, but doing something about it.”
A Rasmussen poll in January put Richardson just four percentage points behind GOP candidate McCain in a general election. The same poll, however, showed Richardson losing by 15 points to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In surveys that pit him against all the other Democratic candidates, Richardson has garnered well below 10 percent, compared to 30 and 40 percent for Hillary Clinton. Obama and Edwards have received between 10 and 20 percent. Richardson will likely have a chance in the national spotlights sometime this year. “A year ago Gov. Warner of Virginia was what I would call the flavor of the month, and he was hot, and everybody was talking about Warner being the guy that could take on Hillary,” Bendixen says. “And all of a sudden his time came and went, he didn’t take advantage of it, and he dropped out of the race. I think Obama has taken advantage of the situation as perfectly as I’ve seen any candidate do so in many years. Richardson will probably get, in the next 12 months, an opportunity to get hot. And we’ll see how his campaign does taking advantage of it or not taking advantage of it. I wouldn’t necessarily assume that Obama has gotten all of this publicity and that Richardson will not get it.”
No matter who the Democratic candidate is, the battle for the Southwest in ’08 will be arduous, especially if McCain is on the GOP ticket. The Rocky Mountain region, which includes much of the Southwest, remains a Republican stronghold for presidential elections, as does the South (which comprises the 11 states of the Confederacy). “States where the demographic composition of the electorate is changing, especially with the rise of Latino voters, are where Democrats should have greater strength in the future than they’ve had in the past,” says Black. “Were those states to shift to the Democrats, that would make it harder for the Republicans to win U.S. elections.”
The Midwest has become the most significant swing region for presidential elections, which Black and his brother Earl demonstrate in their new book, Divided America. In theory, the increasing Hispanic population in the Midwest would also help Richardson, particularly in battleground states like Ohio.
“He’s running for vice president,” Black insists. “He’s running for a place on the ticket in hopes he can do well enough in the primaries that he would be an obvious candidate for the vice presidential slot.”
Richardson counters, “No, I am running for president. Otherwise, I like being the governor of New Mexico. I like having a direct impact on improving people’s lives through things like better education systems and healthcare. Nothing against my opponents, but I believe I’m the best candidate and the hardest worker.”
And he’s taller than Edwards, Obama, and Hillary.