Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Elected 2002, 1st term up Jan. 2007
Born:	Nov. 15, 1947, Pasadena, CA
Home:	Santa Fe
Education:	Tufts U., B.A. 1970, Fletcher Schl. of Law and Diplomacy, M.A. 1971
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Barbara)
Elected  Office:	U.S. House of Reps., 1982-97.
Professional Career:	Congressional rel., U.S. Dept. of State, 1973-75; Staff, Senate Foreign Relations Subcmte., 1975-78; Exec. Dir., NM Dem. Party, 1978; Pres., Richardson Trade Group, 1978-82; U.S. Ambassador to U.N., 1997-98; Secy., U.S. Dept. of Energy, 1998-00.
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Bill Richardson, a Democrat, was elected governor of New Mexico in 2002, 20 years after he was first elected to Congress. Richardson is a unique politician--an Hispanic with an Anglo name, a newcomer when he was first elected in New Mexico where many families go back 300 years, an adept politician who has also been an international negotiator. He was born in California and grew up in Mexico City. His father was a banker from Boston and his mother Mexican; she now lives in Cuernavaca and voted for PRI candidate Francisco Labastida in the July 2000 Mexican election. He graduated from prep school in New England, where he met his wife. He was a good pitcher and in 1967 was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics. But "I was a curveball pitcher, and my elbow fell apart." He graduated from Tufts's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and got a master's there. That led to a job as a "sort of go-fer" at the State Department when Henry Kissinger was secretary of state and a job on Senator Hubert Humphrey's staff. Then in 1978 he moved to New Mexico to become executive director of the state Democratic party. He was fired after a month by Governor Bruce King and proceeded to run against 1st District Congressman Manuel Lujan. This was a Republican year and Lujan had deep roots in Albuquerque and had been in office since 1968. But Richardson held him to a 51%-49% victory. New Mexico got a third congressional district from the 1980 Census, and the legislature drew a new, heavily Hispanic 3d District in northern New Mexico. Richardson, based in Santa Fe, had already carried much of this territory in the 1980 race, and he ran in 1982. He beat former Lieutenant Governor Roberto Mondragon 36%-31% in the primary and then won the general election with 64% of the vote. At age 35, after four years in New Mexico, he had a safe seat in the House.

In the House he rose in the Democratic leadership to be a Chief Deputy Whip. He had a somewhat moderate voting record and was not afraid to buck organized labor by lobbying hard for NAFTA in 1992 and 1993. From his unique background he saw the upside potential of a Mexico more closely aligned with the United States and the downside potential of a Mexico spurned and rejected. He was the lone member of the New Mexico delegation to oppose the Waste Isolation Pilot Project for several years, but supported it when tougher environmental standards were imposed. In December 1992 he came close to being named Secretary of the Interior, but that job went to Bruce Babbitt. After that he spent much time on foreign affairs. In February 1994 he traveled to Myanmar and met with imprisoned human rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi after meeting with a head of the military junta--an important statement of American support for human rights. In July 1994 he traveled to Haiti and met with General Raoul Cedras and in a five-hour conversation tried to get him to cede power, unsuccessfully. In December 1994 he was traveling to North Korea when two U.S. helicopter pilots were gunned down for allegedly trespassing into North Korean airspace. He negotiated for the release of the surviving pilot but ended up returning with the remains of the one who died; the other pilot was soon released.

In January 1997 Richardson was nominated as ambassador to the United Nations. Here was an opportunity to be a major player in foreign policy, although Richardson was cabined in by the close supervision of his predecessor, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. But he did negotiate agreements between the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and opposition forces and secured the release of Red Cross workers held hostage in Sudan, and the foreign policy experience he was gaining seemed likely to make him a plausible vice presidential candidate in 2000 or later. The only embarrassing thing about his service was the fact, later disclosed that, at the request of a White House staffer and without asking why, he offered a job to Monica Lewinsky; she rejected it as insufficiently grand. Then in June 1998 Energy Secretary Federico Pena resigned and Bill Clinton, eager to have at least one Hispanic in an official cabinet position, shifted Richardson to the post. This was not really a promotion: Energy is a department that is made up of several unrelated agencies, some of them with deep troubles. One of those was the Los Alamos National Laboratory, from which, it seemed, secret documents about the assembly of nuclear weapons made their way to China. The suspect was physicist Wen Ho Lee, and Richardson fired him in March 1999. Lee was indicted on 59 counts of transferring nuclear weapons data to unsecure computers, but the case against him was thoroughly botched; most charges were dropped and in September 2000 he pleaded guilty to one count of downloading sensitive material. Richardson was much criticized in Congress for his work on improving security in the national laboratories, and his connection to the case was a political liability. He was mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate in 2000--the Democrats would have loved to run a Hispanic--but his name soon fell off the list. As he put it later, "At the time they were making the final decision for the Gore ticket in 2000, the Los Alamos hard drive issues came up and that nixed me. If I was asked by Gore, I would have accepted. But the security stuff cancelled me out."

After Al Gore's defeat, Richardson returned to Santa Fe; he did some work for Kissinger McClarty associates and served on corporate boards, but it was obvious he was running for governor. He had considered running before, especially in 1994, but decided not to. The governor elected that year, Republican Gary Johnson, had been reelected in 1998 and was ineligible to run again. There were no obvious successors: most Republican politicians were little known statewide, and well-known Democrats had malodorous reputations.

Richardson announced his candidacy in January 2002 and pledged to shake 600 hands a day; on September 16 he broke Theodore Roosevelt's record of 8,513, set on New Year's Day 1908, by shaking 13,392 hands at the New Mexico State Fair and a tailgate party at the University of New Mexico (his campaign flew in a representative of the Guinness Book of World Records to document the feat). He said that he would use his diplomatic skills to attract new business and abridge partisan differences. He called for lower taxes and incentives for new jobs and praised the efforts of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce to improve the city's schools--not refrains usually heard from New Mexico Democrats. He had opposition from two Democrats, former state Representative Gary King, whose father Bruce King had served three non-consecutive terms as governor and state Land Commissioner Ray Powell. But at the state Democratic convention in March, he won 1,288 of 1,705 votes. King and Powell failed to get enough to qualify for the ballot. With his energy and his national contacts, Richardson raised and spent large sums, eventually $6.8 million, more than twice as much as both parties' candidates spent in 1998, and began running ads showing his vision for the state.

Meanwhile, there was a spirited race for the Republican nomination. The lead candidate was state Representative John Sanchez, a roofing contractor from Albuquerque's North Valley, who had won his seat in 2000 by defeating, by 206 votes, the 30-year Speaker of the New Mexico House Raymond Sanchez. He called for lower taxes, higher teacher pay and more accountability in schools; he opposed collective bargaining for state employees and pledged to continue Johnson's limits on spending. His chief competition came from Lieutenant Governor Walter Bradley, who took similar positions. Sanchez ran a series of negative ads against Bradley, charging that he was close to legislative Democrats. In April Sanchez stirred controversy when he said, "Let's empower the people of our state to … put an end to the banana republic that has controlled our state for the last 75 years." In June Sanchez beat Bradley 59%-35%. But Bradley and Gary Johnson were still unhappy with Sanchez's ads. Johnson did not endorse Sanchez until mid-July; Bradley withheld his endorsement even longer.

In the general election Sanchez called for vouchers, merit pay for teachers and better testing; he ran a series of ads recounting his rise from poverty under the theme of "Dream Big." But Richardson had much more money and took many more specific stands on issues. He called for cutting the state income tax--New Mexico's 8.2% top rate is much higher than those of surrounding states--and eliminating the gross receipts tax. Amid news of drought and water conservation measures, he called for a statewide water policy and sketched one out in considerable detail. He opposed vouchers, but supported charter schools and tax credits for parochial schools. Like Sanchez he favored the death penalty and a concealed weapons law.

Richardson pledged to conduct a positive campaign unless attacked. He was: Sanchez ran ads criticizing Richardson for serving on the board of Peregrine Systems, which misstated its earnings and whose CEO, Richardson's wife's brother-in-law, resigned. Richardson said he was only an outside director and had resigned that position in June 2002. Richardson ran ads criticizing Sanchez for absenteeism in the legislature and for doctoring his resume; Sanchez said he started his roofing business in 1980, but in the mid-1980s was also working as a flight attendant. "While Bill Richardson was cutting taxes for New Mexico, John Sanchez was serving orange juice at 30,000 feet." There was little suspense about the result. "The margin is important," said Richardson before the election. "I want a really good margin to be able to govern, to do the out-of-the-box solutions that are needed. I want a good victory." He got it. Richardson won 55%-39%. He ran not far behind in Little Texas, carried the Albuquerque area comfortably and won as much as 75% of the vote in Hispanic and Indian counties. He was the only one of four Clinton cabinet members running in 2002 who won. Inevitably, he was asked whether he had ambitions for national office. "I've always wanted to run for governor. I love this state, and I think the governor can make an enormous difference in people's lives--more so than any job I have held. I see this as a sort of culmination of my career. I am not interested in going back to Washington"--not even as vice president. Where did he expect to be in 10 years? "Smoking cigars in Santa Fe and riding my horses." Barbara Richardson, asked if he would run for president in 2008, said, "I'll tell you what I tell him. 'That's another life and another wife.' Honest to God. Not my bag."

Richardson appointed two Republicans and several Hispanics and Indians to his cabinet and immediately started lobbying legislators of both parties for his tax cut. Unusually in New Mexico, they brought the issue up before the budget and on Valentine's Day 2003 Richardson signed a bill cutting the top income tax rate from 8.2% in steps to 4.9% and cutting the capital gains tax in half over five years. Richardson said he planned a special session for the fall for more fundamental changes in tax laws. Richardson also made national news in January 2003 when a North Korean delegation on the way to the United Nations stopped off, with Secretary of State Colin Powell's permission, in Santa Fe and had several sessions with Richardson at the Governor's Mansion; Richardson briefed Powell and various senators on the talks and called for direct negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea.

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State Capitol, 4th Floor, Santa Fe 87300, 505-476-2200; Fax: 505-576-2226; Web: www.governor.state.nm.us.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Bill Richardson (D)	268,674	55%
	John Sanchez (R)	189,090	39%
	David Bacon (Green)	26,465	5%
2002 primary	Bill Richardson (D)	unopposed
1998 general	Gary E. Johnson (R)	271,948	55%
	Martin Chavez (D)	226,755	45%