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.