Associated Press

As a U.S. congressman, Bill Richardson met with Saddam Hussein in 1995 to negotiate the release of two Americans who had strayed across the Iraqi border from Kuwait. Whether he's engaging voters or negotiating with heads of state, Richardson has built a career on being a charming politician and relentless socializer.

Tribune file

Bill Richardson walks in a parade in this file photo from 1982, the year he was elected to Congress in a newly created 3rd District for New Mexico. Those who knew Richardson in the mid-'70s when he came to New Mexico say he was never afraid to seek out, charm and learn from the people he needed most.

Related Links

• Listen to the Daily News Roundup Podcast

More Bill Richardson's Quest

• Presidential campaigns court Richardson's big-name New Mexico backers
• TRIB TALK
• Phill Casaus: Bill Richardson still has his eye on Washington, D.C.

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Albuquerque Old Town
• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

In the mid-1970s, a low-level staffer on Capitol Hill could hardly expect to catch anyone's attention. But Bill Richardson was different. A political neophyte from the East Coast, he harbored an audacious ambition, one that would carry him to New Mexico and, eventually, the world stage.

How did it happen? How did a so-called carpetbagger rise from anonymity to Congress, the United Nations, a Cabinet secretary, New Mexico's governor and now, perhaps, a presidential run?

The story starts in 1977, with a phone call. Richardson, still living in Washington, D.C., asked Ed Romero, the Democratic Party chairman in Bernalillo County during that time, to meet with him, to have a little talk about politics in the Land of Enchantment. Romero, Richardson knew, was a somebody, a wheel. (He would later become U.S. ambassador to Spain.)

The call was a cheeky move, pure Richardson: never afraid to gladhand, never afraid to seek out and charm the person he needed.

"He told me of his plans to move to New Mexico and run for office," recalls Romero, "and I told him he was nuts."

Still, Romero agreed to have dinner with Richardson at a Corrales restaurant. In those few hours, the upstart convinced the establishment that he was for real.

"I'm happy to say I was wrong; he wasn't nuts. He came and ran and the rest is history," said Romero, now the co-chairman of Richardson's transition team for his second gubernatorial term.

Actually, the rest is not history, in large part because William Blaine Richardson always seems to be rewriting his own diary, always chasing a goal that is at least equal to his outsized personality.

But Bill Richardson's New Mexico story began with that phone call, that meal, that wish to be something, somebody, someone more than the son of a Boston banker.

Scheming, studying and schmoozing

Supporters and critics, many of whom expect Richardson to announce his presidential intentions this week agree that his drive has a key cornerstone: his persona. It's an interesting mix of pushy but charming politician and relentless socializer.

He has, as he reminds the public time after time, sat down with Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. He's negotiated with Sudanese and North Koreans. He's been to countries most Americans couldn't locate on a map.

On the other hand, he's been effective with county commissioners from Mora, pencil-pushers in Albuquerque, cowboys in Tularosa. For Richardson, it's not the business card - or the warhead - that's the challenge. It's the personal connection.

You only do that if you have the gift of gab, and Richardson, 59, honed and rehoned the art from the moment he landed in New Mexico.

"He'd say to me, `Get me in front of whoever - 15, 20 minutes and travel time,'" said Santa Fe lobbyist Scott Scanland, who worked on Richardson's first campaign for Congress in 1980.

Richardson's charm isn't microwave-fast: his rise from 1977 nobody to a national political player in 2007 has taken plenty of hard work in a system that often moves at a glacial speed.

But to many, his ability to balance the short term - schmoozing everyone from the uncommonly powerful to the commonly plain - against the long run of building a political résumé has been nothing short of astounding.

University of California-Irvine associate political science professor Louis DeSipio, who follows Hispanic politics, said part of Richardson's success has been his ability to always keep his eye on something bigger.

"He demonstrated ambition, and that's important," DeSipio said. "He didn't want to spend his whole career in Congress and it always seemed he was going to move on."

In his book, a 365-page tome that seems written solely to introduce himself to a country he might want to lead, Richardson describes how he talked his Boston native wife into moving to the world - the state - he wanted to inhabit.

"Barbara and I needed to talk this through," he wrote. " `I need to be from somewhere,' I told her. She wasn't overjoyed by the prospect of a move west, to put it mildly."

Richardson - born in Pasadena, Calif., to a Mexican mother and an American father whose banking interests made him a powerful figure in Mexico - prevailed.

The Richardsons moved to New Mexico, with Bill Richardson intent on building a political career that would last.

To succeed in a state that at times was cool to glad-handing outsiders, Richardson quickly figured that he needed local knowledge.

So he played reporter.

Richardson would interview every political person he met, said U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, a Santa Fe Democrat who was among Richardson's first interviewees.

"He wanted to know `What is it about Governor (Bruce) King that makes him a good politician?' " Udall said. "He'd ask, `What makes him a good leader, what characteristics does he have?' "

Richardson, Udall says, took mental notes, soaking up every detail he could.

"`What happened in that race over there, how did that person get to be where they are?' " Richardson asked, Udall recalled.

Soon, Richardson's mental file on New Mexico was bulging. His ambition was growing. Clearly, he'd found the place he wanted to stay.

Becoming a New Mexican

Not long after arriving in New Mexico, Richardson talked his way into the executive directorship of the state Democratic Party, a post he wouldn't hold for long. When voters installed Bruce King as New Mexico's governor in 1978, Richardson was out. There was no need for two leaders in the party.

After all, King, who'd run the state in the early 1970s, was a political icon known to cowboys in Roswell and bankers in Santa Fe. Richardson was just getting to know everyone on his block.

King was in the Governor's Mansion. Politically speaking, Richardson was on the street.

"We didn't fire him," King said. "We just didn't appropriate more money."

For his part, Richardson recalls the time like this:

"Later, I got to talk to King," he wrote in his book. " `I thought I had a promise from you that I could continue as executive director,' I said."

" `I never made such a promise, Bill,' " King responded.

"`Yes, sir, you did. I'm sure you made a commitment to me.'"

" `Bill,' he said, `a commitment and a promise are not the same thing.' "

" `You could have fooled me,' " Richardson wrote. "I heard it as a `yes.' He meant it as maybe, but don't take it to the bank. Another political lesson learned."

Out of a job in the winter of 1978, Richardson went to work for the less-than-princely sum of $1,000 a month under Bert Lindsay, then the chairman of the Bernalillo County Democratic Party.

At times, Richardson, who lived in Santa Fe, even bunked in a spare room at the Albuquerque home of Lindsay and his wife, Imogene.

"The governor (Richardson) took a little chance in working for Bert," she said. "Bert couldn't pay him much."

Suffering from "itchy feet," as he described it in his book, Richardson continued to move. In a race that many observers considered political suicide, Richardson decided to take on political heavyweight Manuel Lujan Jr. in New Mexico's 1st Congressional District in 1980.

So he turned on his persona. And it worked, Scanland said.

"Here you'd have this 70-year old San Miguel County guy who'd been involved in politics his whole life," Scanland said. "You'd have Richardson, an outsider who would strike up a conversation in this beautiful Spanish and within 15 minutes, everything just changed."

Being "from" New Mexico wasn't as easy as it seemed, however.

Richardson needed advice, in part to blunt the "carpetbagger" tag he would face.

He found Scanland, a New Mexico insider, who immediately told his boss to lose the Grizzly Adams beard and name his fund-raising committee New Mexicans for Bill Richardson.

And ditch the fancy car.

Richardson, who loves autos and motorcycles, was driving a convertible Alfa Romeo at the time - a rich kid's car, an Easterner's car.

"We thought zipping around Mora County in an Alfa Romeo probably wasn't the best thing," Scanland said.

Richardson went with a brand from Detroit, and began fitting in. Still, Richardson wrote, the early days were tough - in part because he and Barbara had little money. Eventually, he had to ask Barbara if they could spend the $100,000 he inherited from his father on the 1980 campaign. Later still, for a 1982 race, he needed another $100,000 loan.

Lujan, a longtime congressman from Albuquerque was everything Richardson was not: well-known, staid, a bankable entity with historic ties to the area.

But Richardson charged ahead, even putting together ads in Spanish that established his Hispanic credentials in a state that knew very few Hispanics named Richardson.

"Nobody gave him a chance," said Mike Cerletti, then a friend of Richardson's and now his tourism secretary.

"They said it wasn't going to happen. You don't just come in from another place and challenge an incumbent like Lujan. And it didn't happen, but he came close."

Lujan took the race by about 1 percent in a district he'd dominated for seven terms. In losing, Richardson won. He'd established himself as a player, a charger, a man on a mission.

Coming back to New Mexico

Richardson wasn't dissuaded by the defeat. For the next two years, he worked like few had seen, intent on running for a new congressional seat created by a census reapportionment.

"I'd drop him off at midnight and I'd go back for him at 5 or 5:30 in the morning," said Butch Maki, a close friend who flew Richardson around in a Cessna 182 for the 1982 congressional election for northern New Mexico.

"There would be papers and briefings spread all over the floor," Maki said, "and I knew he had been up reading all night."

When a friend from college dropped in to help with the campaign, Richardson's pace put the friend in the hospital with exhaustion, Maki said.

Richardson's high energy paid off. In 1982, he easily won the 3rd Congressional District.

"From then on, he never had a problem with his races," said Udall, who lost to Richardson that year in a four-way Democratic primary. "Soon he was winning by huge margins, quickly getting 60 and 70 percent of the votes."

Clearly, he was off - a constantly moving flash with moppish hair and cowboy boots. He served 14 years in Congress, then became ambassador to the United Nations in 1997, then secretary of the Department of Energy in 1998. His landing zone at the end of the Clinton administration was once again New Mexico, where the Governor's Mansion awaited.

For Richardson, politics is always back to the future, always meeting - or re-meeting - people who might be able to help. And so, a tasty meal with an electoral chaser would always be key.

In 2000, Jamie Koch, who later would become the state's Democratic Party chairman, sat down to lunch with Richardson in La Cueva, near Mora, at the Salman Ranch, famed for its raspberries.

"I said I really wished he would run for governor," Koch says. "We had some raspberries, we had a really good meeting and he asked me to round up some people."

About 75 people got together in a room in Albuquerque and pledged to raise $1 million for Richardson's first gubernatorial race. They did so in short order, wowing a state better known for its poverty than its bankroll. The figure would turn out to be pocket change for Richardson, who for his second governor's race in 2006 raised nearly $14 million.

By the time he announced he was running for re-election in 2006, reporters paid little attention to him or his Republican opponent, John Dendahl. It was a foregone conclusion that Richardson, a ham with Republicans as well as Democrats, would triumph. He did, with 68.8 percent of the vote. He likes to round that to 69 percent.

Should he announce he wants to be president, Richardson would do so ranking at the bottom of national polls. He'd be the first presidential candidate from a state some mistake as part of Mexico or Arizona. He'd be the first Hispanic. He'd likely find himself competing against big-timers like Hillary Clinton and others with a bigger national profile.

But Richardson has been an unknown before. It doesn't scare him a bit. He has won elections and lost one, slept in the governor's mansion and in the extra rooms provided by friends.

Only one thing seems to have changed from 1977 to 2007. For Bill Richardson, it's no longer about "being from somewhere."

It's about going somewhere.