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 News from Around the Americas | July 2007 
Trailing in Cash, Polls, Richardson Pounds Pavement
 Albert Mckeon - Nasua Telegraph
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| | New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson pauses for a moment as he is surrounded by supporters on a street in Portsmouth during a campaign stop July 16. (Stanton M. Paddock/Nasua Telegraph) |
Bill Richardson got as comfortable as he could in a barebones cable-access television studio.
He slid into a tiny folding chair and clasped his hands on a round table. After some small talk with the regulars of “Senior Speak NH,” a show broadcast in Concord, he had an important question.
“So what should I call you?” Richardson asked.
“Bob,” replied the host. “Both of us are Bob.”
Richardson had just met Bob Williams and Bob Denz, and was still getting their names straight. But who can fault someone for misplacing a name or two, especially a presidential candidate who packs a schedule with town hall-style meetings, media interviews, cocktail receptions and parades?
These events make for busy days for the New Mexico governor, who is running one of the more active presidential campaigns in the state.
With comparatively little campaign cash and modest poll numbers, Richardson feels he has no choice other than to pound pavement. While some of his rivals hold mostly large-scale events in New Hampshire and usually near the weekends, Richardson does most any kind of campaigning, and he often does it during weekdays.
“I’ve got shoe leather,” he said in Concord earlier this month. “I’m going to outwork them all.”
Several times throughout a day of brisk campaigning in the state capital and on the Seacoast on July 16, Richardson made veiled and specific references to his Democratic competitors, chief among them frontrunners Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill. Those two, as well as former Sen. John Edwards, lead in public opinion polls and money raised and, resultantly, draw the most media attention.
After completing an interview with WBUR, a Boston public radio station, in a storage closet at Concord’s City Auditorium, Richardson asked news anchor Bob Oakes if he had any luck landing Clinton or Obama. “Have they returned your calls?” Richardson said.
Oakes said, “No.”
The campaigns of Obama and Clinton are in a position to be selective. Obama raised the most cash of any Democratic candidate in the second quarter of filing this year: His reported $32.5 million netting topped Clinton by about $10 million. She leads most public opinion polls of likely voters, although a recent survey of New Hampshire Democrats had Obama closing in.
Despite a portfolio bursting with political and diplomatic experience, Richardson, 59, lags behind in fundraising; he claims to have raised $7 million in the second quarter. He has placed mostly fourth in polls, but the recent poll that showed Obama gaining – conducted by the University of New Hampshire – also had Richardson supplanting Edwards for third.
His campaign thus serves as an unwilling test case for an always-evolving presidential primary. By campaigning the old-fashioned way, Richardson hopes he can overcome the money and polling shortfalls some political pundits see as potentially troublesome to Democrats not named Hillary or Obama. At least one observer thinks Richardson’s strategy can work.
“They’re hopeful,” political scientist Dean Spiliotes said of Richardson’s campaign. “At least for New Hampshire, he does pretty good at the grassroots stuff. He’s a good person at meeting people, walking down Main Street . . . He’s very personable. He’s not going to have the money to compete with a national campaign, so he’s got to work it this way.”
As of July 29, Richardson had made 15 visits to New Hampshire since November 2004 and spent 28 days here, according to Democracy in Action, an outfit that tracks the movements of candidates. Clinton has visited the state 11 times and spent 14 days here; Obama has dropped in 12 times and stayed 17 days.
By coupling appearances and television advertising, Richardson may have a “fighting chance” to be a third option should voters decide against Clinton or Obama, Spiliotes said. Political experts had Edwards slated for that slot, but Richardson has made headway, moving from one percent to 10 percent recently in that UNH poll, he said. Edwards had eight percent support from likely voters in the poll.
“Their first chance is to get up somewhere near Edwards,” Spiliotes said. “There’s still a long way to go.”
Canvassing the state
As is often the case for candidates who trail in polls, Richardson downplayed the survey results at several public appearances. He’s not paying attention to the “smarty pants set” in Washington, “especially those who tell us who’s ahead in the polls,” he said at an event in Concord’s City Auditorium.
He paused and added: “Although we’re moving up.”
At that event, Richardson promoted himself as a candidate more understanding of women’s issues than anyone else running for president, with the implication that the list includes Clinton. “Women are the majority in this country, and we should stop thinking of them as a special interest,” he said.
As president, Richardson would place women in cabinet posts, as he has done at the Statehouse in Santa Fe, he said. He would also create a “caregivers” incentive at least as high as the minimum wage through Social Security, work for paid family leave for births and adoptions, and ask Supreme Court nominees if they support settled law such as Roe vs. Wade.
Invariably, a voter at an event asked Richardson about immigration. Richardson’s mother is Mexican. Many are curious how his heritage shapes his views, he said. He believes in stronger border patrol, more dialogue with Mexico and a U.S. legalization program that is not amnesty, he said.
“I’m just trying to be practical here with a difficult problem,” he told Jon Greenberg, guest host of the New Hampshire Public Radio show “The Exchange.”
Throughout the day, Richardson touted his foreign policy experience. A United Nations ambassador during the Clinton administration, Richardson negotiated for the release of two American contractors captured by the Hussein regime in Iraq and an Army pilot and the remains of his dead co-pilot from North Korea. He has also had talks with leaders in the Middle East.
Richardson would pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately but also seek reconciliation talks between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds; he would push harder for oil-revenue sharing and possibly look to partition the country as seen in the Dayton Accords with Bosnia, he said.
He believes dialogue with not just allies but enemies will help the U.S. cause, a reversal of Bush administration policy that has frozen communication with Iran and, until recently, North Korea. “We’ve got to talk to our enemies, reason with them,” he said.
Richardson arrived at NHPR’s Concord studio only minutes before he had to take the air, but he made the staff wait as he finished a cell phone call. A campaign aide blurted that a Middle East leader was on the phone. The next day, in a brief telephone interview with The Telegraph, Richardson laughed and said he couldn’t reveal who was on the other side of that cell phone in the NHPR lobby.
Policy vs. personality
With Richardson, it’s not all about policy. As with any politician, it’s also about personality.
As he did in the NHPR studio and on the public access TV set, Richardson needs no more than a minute to look relaxed. Walking downtown Portsmouth late in this day of touring, he displayed a cool saunter seen in cowboys. He gripped people’s hands with both of his, patted backs and took time to answer questions.
He joked occasionally and tried to involve people when reviewing his platform. At a house party in a leafy backyard in Dover, he had a technology consultant – who doesn’t work for his campaign – play-act as Mexican President Felipe Calderon so Richardson could demonstrate the art of diplomacy.
Taking a shot at the images of his competitors, Richardson said he is not “the blown-dry candidate. I’m a little overweight, but you should have seen me six months ago.”
To Richardson, where he is six months from now matters most. If winning or faring well in New Hampshire means banging pots and pans in a Greenville parade – as he did July 4 – or holding forums in towns that no presidential candidate has ever visited – as he did in Marlow – he’ll do it, he said repeatedly throughout the day.
As with the rest of the pack, he’ll win some voters and lose some.
Richardson’s background impresses Kathleen Somssich, whose husband, Peter, is the Portsmouth city Democratic chairman. She welcomed Richardson to Market Square. Although she hasn’t chosen a candidate yet, she likes Richardson’s foreign policy experience.
But only a few handshakes after greeting Somssich, Richardson failed to impress Molly Brown. The 19-year-old asked the candidate how he would engage communities in energy conservation, she said, but “he really didn’t answer my question.”
Brown and her friend Marta Lyons said they will vote for Obama because they believe he is electable. “As much as you don’t want that to be part of it, it is,” the 19-year-old said.
Albert McKeon can be reached at 594-5832 or amckeon@nashuatelegraph.com. |
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