February 09, 2007
The Lives Of Bill Richardson
On Sunday, Bill Richardson’s home state newspaper, The Albuquerque Journal , will run the fourth installment of a five-part biographical series about the New Mexico governor.
Titled High Ambition, this fascinating series is the product of months of research by reporters Leslie Linthicum and Thomas J. Cole. The first three segments provide a revealing look at Richardson’s boyhood in Mexico City and his rise to power; there is plenty of evidence to suggest Richardson might make an extremely attractive general election candidate.
At first, it’s hard not to notice the similarities between Richardson and, if you can believe it, John Kerry. Both had well-traveled, internationalist fathers who were reserved and emotionally distant; both attended blue-blood, East Coast prep schools where they perceived themselves to be outsiders; both followed their fathers to elite Northeastern universities; both began their political careers with unsuccessful, carpet-bagging congressional bids.
But unlike Kerry, whose burning ambition and calculating ways rubbed people the wrong way at every stop in his life from prep school to the Senate, the equally ambitious Richardson seems to have attained at least grudging respect from those who failed to succumb to his considerable charm.
Stylistically, the candidate Richardson most clearly resembles is Bill Clinton. Like Clinton, he is a force-of-nature candidate—a smart, physical politician with prodigious retail campaigning skills, comfortable in front of almost any audience. [CHARLES MAHTESIAN]
One particular anecdote from the Journal series evokes the Clinton touch. In his 20s, Richardson had decided he would run for Congress in New Mexico, a state he had no real connection to, but nevertheless a place that seemed receptive to a bilingual, Hispanic candidate like him. In his first visit to the state, Richardson made an appointment to meet with Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) Democratic chairman Ed Romero.
“ ‘I want to move to New Mexico, and one of these days I want to run for office,’ Richardson said.
Romero, a canny power broker who knew a carpetbagger when he saw one, chuckled and told the young outsider, ‘You’re [expletive] nuts.’ ”
Undeterred, Richardson asked Romero and his wife to dinner; by the end of the night, Romero was converted. A few years later, Richardson was the congressman from New Mexico’s 3rd District.
For more interesting detail about Richardson’s early years, check out his 2005 autobiography .
The first chapter offers this whopper:
“My grandfather apparently had a roving eye, and the story is that he fathered children by four different women in Mexico and Central America. Occasionally, one of my dad’s half-brothers or half-sisters—that’s what they were, after all—would show up in Mexico City, and I suspect he did what he regarded as his familial duty by helping them out financially. To this day, I get letters that begin with something like, ‘My name is Freddy Richardson…’ from people scattered around the Americas who say that we are related.”
Posted at 09:04 AM
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