The Bill Richardson Blog

A quick hit from our friends at the New Hampshire Union Leader:

Our Bible said David actually defeated Goliath, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, among others, must read the same one. He told this newspaper earlier this week that underdogs can win in New Hampshire.

He said he knows the media’s “not taking me seriously right now. I know the pundits aren’t.’’ But he said he doesn’t want to “peak’’ right now anyway.

How about that? Someone who doesn’t think he should “peak’’ a year or so before the first primary and nearly two years before the general Presidential election!

This in response to Bayh’s dropping out and citing “too many Goliaths” in the field. Let me put some context around this story. New Hampshirites love their first primary, and they love it being relevant. They also love the idea that no one tells them who to vote for and that they’ll make up their own minds about everything. Many a Concordian has bristled at the idea that the Presidential race is already set and their primary is nothing but a rubber stamp.

Here’s my contribution to the state challenge. I’m from California, but haven’t started a CA for Richardson blog because I haven’t lived there for 4 years and I’m hoping someone closer to the action will jump in. But I think I can still make the case!

1) All Things Earth: The California economy, and the nation’s, for that matter, is dependent on the load of agricultural products that come out of the San Joaquin Valley. Energy use, water conservation, pollution, and balance with the gorgeous mountains, rivers, deserts, and forests of California are constant battles, especially with our predeliction toward biblical natural disasters and tendency to take tons of energy from neighboring states.

Bill Richardson has the know-how to contribute to these policies, as a former Secretary of Energy, as a man backing bold renewable energy and efficiency policies in New Mexico, as a governor who supports conservation efforts and the Water Innovation Fund and fought excessive oil-and-gas exploration. He’s a pro.

2) Immigration: California gets a quarter of the whole country’s immigration flow, and just less than half of all Mexican immigrants live in California. The giant marches in Los Angeles last year show that people want a humane solution to our broken policies. Bill Richardson has been an outspoken yet moderate leader on these issues, supporting better enforcement and funds along the border to deal with the drug crime, property damage, and human smuggling and exploitation that illegal immigration spawns, and also a guest worker program to acknowledge our need for unskilled labor, decrease illegal flows, and bring more migrant workers into the legal economy where we can monitor taxes, competition, and working conditions. A guest worker program is crucial for California’s agricultural industry, where when illegal immigration flows dropped due to heavy security after 9/11, there were shortages during harvests. Richardson understands the middle road here.

3) Financial Management: California is pretty spotty on this one. In NM, Richardson cut taxes, saved millions through government efficiency initiatives, and kept a balanced budget and big budget surpluses. He’s a Democrat folks! California and the nation need this kind of financial discipline.

4) An Understanding of Diversity: California is like the nation: giant, incredibly diverse, lots of political squabbles to work through. Bill Richardson has been an international diplomat, a Member of Congress, and an executive, among others, and in those jobs he genuinely worked with people not like him – whether with Republicans in purple-state New Mexico or the dictators of North Korea and Iraq. That’s a guy who could apply himself to the challenging problems of California much better than many of the ‘08 hopefuls.

Richardson for California.

Yesterday, without much fanfare, Gov. Richardson stated that he will be supporting Ned Lamont in the Connecticut race. While he called Joe a “good friend,” he also said that Lieberman should “respect the will of the voters and step aside.” There are a couple of implications to this.

At first blush, this seems like the safe move, right? But no. Not quite. The safest move would be to say nothing. Gov. Richardson is not in the Senate, he will probably never be in the Senate, and he is not involved with the DSCC in any official way. His main jobs in 2006 are (1) get re-elected himself, which is essentially done, and (2) help more Democratic governors get elected, as the chair of the DGA. So if he wanted to, he certainly had the option of staying silent.

Notably, Ken Salazar (D-CO), made the opposite decision. Salazar was being responsive to his own fortunes in Colorado. (Wrongly, I think, but whatever.)

Richardson is being responsive to the demands of the national party. Quite simply, defection from Lamont is not something the progressive netroots will forgive. Backing Lieberman in the primary is one thing, but the netroots feel they’ve earned a win and deserve the spoils. Richardson, as a matter of political necessity, is backing Lamont because he is going to need the netroots in a little while.

This is low key. But it’s supposed to be. Just like those meetings with bloggers at Yearly Kos, in Washington, in South Carolina. Richardson is laying the groundwork so that, in about six or nine months when it’s announcement time, there will be a structure there and a relationship. And it seems to be working:

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson scores an A+ on the “guy you’d wanna drink a beer with” Presidential litmus test. . . . I expect he’ll be one of the leading anti-Hillary candidates among the 2008 Democratic Presidential contenders.

That’s from one of the SC bloggers Richardson met with.

I guess it would be cool if I did these at regular times. That would require me to be much more organized than I actually am. Anyway, three nice news items from the last couple days:

- EVERYBODY thinks Bush’s impending veto of the stem-cell research bill is a terrible idea, including Nancy Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Because it is.) Six Democratic governors made sure Bush knew they thought it was terrible, too, and sent Senate leaders Reid and Frist a strong letter encouraging them to scrape up the votes to override a veto. Was Richardson among the six? You bet.

By the way, if your Senator is on the fence, please call him or her up. This is such a ridiculous thing to be happening. We’re losing knowledge and medical advances, and our chief executive wants to use his first veto ever to pander to the far right. It really ticks me off. Anyway.

- NM Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish has a fact-filled editorial in the Albuquerque Tribune rebutting criticisms of the “Year of the Child” and its accomplishments.

- “Bill Richardson” is synonymous among Utah Navajos with “awesome advocate for Native rights,” enough that comparing their new governor to Richardson is a big compliment. We haven’t talked about Native American issues much on the blog – this is a reminder to me that we should. Suffice it to say that Richardson knows WAY more about this stuff than the general crop of 2008 possibilities, and I hadn’t even considered that before. Hmm.

WaPo’s got it:

Spend less time opposing and more time proposing how we can fix the mess that the GOP leadership in Washington has put us in. Democratic governors are succeeding in some of the reddest states in the country. The national party needs to adopt their mainstream message.

Bam, baby.

It’s advice so catchy and correct it even rhymes. Less opposing, more proposing. We’re smarter than the other guys–now let’s prove it. I think we’re doing it, and November is going to be great.

Gov. Richardson has unveiled his high school reform plan for New Mexico. It looks good. It creates a high school “diploma of excellence” for high-achieving students, raises graduation requirements (in MATH!), adds funding for teacher training and AP courses, adds funding for pre-AP courses for kids in underserved areas, and other stuff.

The year of the child continues. Education is, hands down, one of the smartest investments you can make as a state. The money you put into educating children will pay off in the most unexpected and immeasurable ways. Education is a core issue of the Democratic party, an issue of national importance and moral depth, and it is one on which this governor has been absolutely, positively excellent. Bravo; here’s to more to come.

Edit: how about I actually link to the P2008 page…

If you haven’t been over to Democracy for America’s P2008 page, where they keep tons of links about the next presidential race, you’re really missing out. Official sites, unofficial sites, and blogs for EVERY possible candidate, and some I never would have thought of. I mean, Feingold has a dozen blogs, sure. But how about MT Governor Brian Schweitzer? Did you know there’s an Olympia Snowe blog? How about one for Indiana Rep. Mike Pence? How ’bout two?

I have to say, I’m pretty proud that informed citizens have gotten behind Richardson, someone only now coming back into the national spotlight, to the point that we have two national blogs (us and AFR) and three state blogs (WA, TX, and MO), and that they are all true grassroots efforts.

The list of blogs also reminded me why I’ve never used “Draft Richardson” language on this site (at least, I think I haven’t.) One, it’s SO overdone. Two, I don’t like drafts! They’re when you don’t want to fight, but we make you. We’re hoping Richardson want to fight of his own accord, bolstered by our support.

Also, I learned via the site that at the 2004 Democratic Convention, the Gov. distributed free jars of salsa with his picture on them. Ahahaha. Cute move.

Courtesy of the Billings Gazette, a write-up of the Gov’s visit to Montana. Man, this event sounds like it was a great time. The energy and excitement out in Montana are hard to match. It really shows you where the future of the party is:

“The Western Governors Association has pledged to produce 20,000 megawatts of clean energy by 2015.”

Governors from both parties have pledged this, he said, and it will be energy from many sources: solar, wind, biomass, ethanol and others.

The leadership for this has to come from the West, he said, promoting fuel efficiency, green buildings and clean coal synfuels.

“I want us (New Mexico) to be the Saudi Arabia of wind, solar and biomass,” he said. Richardson is not averse to providing tax credits for those who use solar power for buildings and homes.

Clean energy, tax cuts, and independence. Brought to you courtesy of Western Democrats. Anyone against any of those things?

The Gov. got in a basketball-themed jab at the president during the annual Gridiron Roast:

Gov. Bill Richardson (D, New Mexico), compared the Bush’s administration’s treatment of U.S. allies over the Iraq war to the NCAA basketball tournament. “Sixty-four teams start and they’re whittled down to just one. Kind of reminds me of what we’ve done with our allies.” Bush followed by calling Richardson and Chuck Hagel (R, Nebraska) “a couple of independent thinkers, which in my book is a negative.”

Richardson’s joke: Kinda funny, super true. Bush’s joke: Not very funny, but also super true. Who you should root for in the tournament: My alma mater and Pac-10 champion, UCLA. Just so we’re all on the same page.

On an unrelated note, you know what really grills my onions? When people say stuff like this:

Since [Feingold’s] not in the media-anointed “front-runner” pool that includes such tired Democratic Leadership Council hacks and Clinton clones as Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York), Bill Richardson (governor of New Mexico) and former vice president Al Gore…

It’s very hip and cute to take shots at the DLC, but I don’t pay attention to it unless there’s at least a couple words attempting to back it up. But more importantly – Clinton clones? First off, CLINTON WAS AWESOME. I will never stop believing that. He made policy mistakes, like many other presidents have, but as a style of politician, which is partly what this guy is getting at, we’ve rarely seen people as charismatic and compassionate, and I wish there were more. Second…Hillary’s married to Bill and all, but as a politician she is no Clinton clone, either in style, base, or even policy these days. As for Bill, well, the brief answer is that Clinton ally and Clinton clone are extremely far apart. Bill has a unique set of skills and experiences – his international negotiation resume first and foremost – that make him a clone of nobody.

I’m sorry we’ve been absent from the blog – it’s a busy time at law school – but we will be back in action shortly.

There are components of Richardson’s ethics package moving through the Senate right now. Among the proposals:

1. People who do business with the state may not contribute to statewide officials, including the governor;

2. Officials, and their family members, must disclose interests in firms seeking state business;

3. Public officials, their employees, and businsesses may not sell goods or services to state agencies the officials are associated with

There are more but these are good, common-sense measures. I’m proud of the Governor for lending some muscle to these steps. “Good government” moves like these are morally required from democratic officials. As people see how deep the corruption in D.C. can get, with the Abramoff scandal and so forth, it’s good for the Governor to take a stand.