The Bill Richardson Blog

Continued from Part 2.

Talk at RiverRun Bookstore, 12:30

The drive to Portsmouth ends up being on a local highway where I can’t break 40 miles an hour. I pass a large yellow sign that says MOOSE CROSSING. Well, that’s not something I see every day. By the time I get to the street where the bookstore is, I’m 20 minutes late. The Gov had the benefit of a highway escort (I think), so got there earlier. I park in a structure advertising an hour for 75 cents (and laugh at how low this is to a Californian like myself), and totter on my high-heel boots through the ice to the bookstore.

When I get there, my heart sinks. There are two other people standing outside the glass door, unable to get in. The bookstore is completely packed, wall-to-wall, and they are not opening the door to more people. I drove all this way for this? I look for a side door.

There, a couple people are looking with curiosity at the crowd. “Who’s in there?” says a woman to her boyfriend. “Bill Richardson,” he says, reading the Richardson for President sign in the window. “Who’s Bill Richardson?” she says. He shrugs.

I call out, “He’s the Governor of New Mexico.” She turns. “Oh, thanks.” And leaves. Oh well.

A couple people inside the store squeeze out, and as they do, I squeeze in. I find a small hole by a side bookshelf and try to pull out my notepad. There’s so many people I can’t move much. The Gov is still doing his speech, so I haven’t missed as much as I thought. (You can see some nice pictures of Richardson at the bookstore at Candidate Photos, although believe me when I say that the people in chairs make it seem much roomier than it was; right behind them was a mosh pit of at least 60 people smushed together. The goateed Jeff Gulko is also visible in the background of one picture.)

Richardson is talking about the need to negotiate with even “bad” world leaders, and how he was on Anderson Cooper when he found himself in the strange position of defending Bush’s decision to talk to North Korea while former Ambassador John Bolton slammed the decision. Bolton’s name gets booed. The Gov does a bad Bush impression, but the crowd forgives him, agreeing that people don’t want a “You’re with us or against us” foreign policy. They go nuts at any mention of international human rights, and laugh loudly when Richardson says that if we only talk to “good” leaders, we’ll soon only have diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

In fact, if I were on Richardson’s staff, I’d tell him to stop more often for applause. There are times the crowd clearly loves what he’s saying, but can’t clap because he’s rolling on to his next idea.

An old man pokes through the crowd and gestures to his wife, who is sitting on a stack of books in the back. He wants to leave. She shakes her head. She’s enjoying this. “I can’t take this,” he says, referring to the pressing crowd. “I have to leave and go sit in the car.” She shrugs, he goes, and she smiles at me before turning back to the Gov.

Richardson gets one more laugh talking about his respect for Bill Clinton. “President Clinton, who I love – well, maybe better not overdo the love. He’s a little mad at me right now. You can guess why.”

During the question session, the Gov gets his most tense question of the day when a man says Richardson tried to “dilute” New Hampshire’s primary (by supporting the Nevada caucus, I guess), and asks, in response to the view that New Hampshire is not diverse enough, “Do you see any bigots here?”

Yikes. The Gov is very polite, and stresses his support for New Hampshire’s status as first-in-the-nation, while explaining that the other caucuses have value. He takes other questions and gets a big hand for advocating light rail projects, and nods for honestly explaining he doesn’t have a complex health care proposal yet and is trying to figure out how best to pay for it.

He closes, and people mob him holding copies of “Between Worlds,” of which the bookstore has now sold out. Pushing up to the front, I hear a guy saying, “I think he has potential!”

A white-haired guy introduces himself to me. I saw him at the café, wearing shades inside, and thought he was security because he looked so badass. He turns out to be Pahl Shipley, Richardson’s communications director. I promise to send him the editorial I wrote for the Gov a few weeks ago, and then run off to get my car and head to the last event of the day in Hampton. I am really, really hungry.