Its common knowledge that Bill Richardson grew up in Mexico City. Yet I never thought about the fact that he was raised a Chilango. Well, he lived there until he was 11 - which should give him a unique perspective on immigration compared to the other presidential candidates.
Although everyone says that Hillary has it synched, I say that Richardson may still surprise us. Its a long time until election day.
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THE CONTENDERS: BILL RICHARDSON
Richardson: Born negotiator
Growing up in 2 worlds, Richardson learned to see issues from both sides
By Ray Quintanilla, Tribune staff reporter
chicagotribune.com
October 16, 2007
IOWA FALLS, Iowa
The seminal moment in Bill Richardson's life came shortly before he was born. His father, a headstrong American banker who worked and lived in Mexico City, told his pregnant wife in the fall of 1947 to pack for a brief trip across the U.S. border.
So she gathered a few things and headed north to deliver her baby. In those days, border officials saw nothing unusual about a pregnant Mexican woman wanting to enter Southern California, so she crossed without incident and headed for Pasadena.
The boy arrived a few days later -- a native born U.S. citizen -- and without as much as a tour of the community, the two returned home.
That moment, and the delicate balancing that it suggests, began the lifelong conflict that Richardson has had with roots. People read his name or hear his voice, and they think Anglo. People see his mestizo features or listen to him address an audience in fluent Spanish, and they think Latino.
His life has been a straddle of those two worlds. Often it has required negotiation and nuance, but largely Richardson has proved remarkably adaptive and adoptive. He endured being derisively called "Pancho" by classmates at his elite U.S. prep school, but later in life has repeatedly found himself comfortable precisely because people don't always see him in one dimension. He has made an art form of being able to understand what his adversary wanted and using that to get what he wants. He has had side tours to negotiate with dictators, to free hostages, to get a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist out of jail in Darfur.
He is a gun-toting Westerner schooled in the northeast. He is the rare Red Sox fan who can also cheer for the Yankees.
So it is hardly surprising that he chose a career in politics, and employed a style that does not see compromise as a bad thing. In public life, he has had an unbroken string of successes, from Tufts University to Congress to a Cabinet post to the New Mexico Governor's Mansion.
And, more than anything, William Blaine Richardson is trying to persuade Americans that his resume and life experience make him the most qualified candidate to be the next president of the United States.
His heritage makes his candidacy unique, but also creates its own set of burdens. On the stump, Richardson often raises the issue first, such as when he was addressing an all-white audience recently in Iowa Falls: "I'm Bill Richardson, and though I might not look like a Richardson is supposed to look, I'm a Latino," he tells a crowd of 200.
"I want you to know my father was an American," he adds, as though the emphasis is needed.
It is typical of Richardson, posing the uncomfortable question himself, then providing the answer. It's a disarming, self-effacing, even humorous side that has helped his upstart candidacy make its way to the middle of the pack, with hopes that should the leaders falter, voters will turn to him.
Yet Richardson can also be defensive. He has snapped when questioned about this identity, especially by those who disagree with his views on immigration and U.S. relations with Mexico.
Such flashes, though, are rare. Richardson is clearly a candidate at ease in the press-the-flesh, slap-the-back retail politics of Iowa. There is a physicality to him that only seems to help, as if he is ever ready to wrap someone in a huge hug.
He is strapping and 6 foot 3, a former college baseball pitcher with professional potential. He is also portly, and some have even measured the seriousness of his presidential ambitions by the inches he had lost from his ample waistline.
His path to the White House begins in Iowa; a state that's only about 4 percent Latino, and that is just one measure of the hill he must climb if he is to get past his better-known opponents.
Yet he is also a man who in three decades has never lost an election. And his stamina is just one reason. A desire to win, at everything, made it easy for Richardson to shake 13,392 hands one day five years ago, setting a new high mark recorded by Guinness World Records.
There is a decidedly rumpled quality to him. His critics say his appearance is a marker of his lack of discipline. In many of the recent candidate debates, Richardson has seemed almost startled by certain questions and then struggles to condense his responses into the sound bites proving so effective for other contenders.
It is both a blessing and a burden for a man who could hit a baseball from either side of the plate. The ability to see all sides of an argument and sometimes advocate multiple sides has served him well as a skilled negotiator and during his rise to power in Washington, D.C.
'Shooting straight'
In less formal settings, Richardson's disarming style has been an important advantage. That straightforward candor is on display at this gathering in rural Iowa, peppered with a few political gaffes he jokes about during presidential debates.
"Shooting straight" as they say in New Mexico, got him elected to a second term with 61 percent of the vote, and though he remains popular, his nearly five years in the Governor's Mansion have not been without controversy. Much of it focused on Richardson's making it possible for state residents to carry firearms in public and questions about "wasteful spending."
Shooting straight can also produce friction. Even with its minuscule Latino population, the Hawkeye State is struggling to understand the impact of a surge in immigrants. "What are we going to do about illegal immigration?" a woman at the Iowa Falls forum asks.
Richardson pauses momentarily; gathering his thoughts because he knows the answer will not earn an applause line.
"I'll tell you my views on this, but first I want to say my views are not popular," he begins, pacing back and forth in a restaurant with deer heads mounted on the walls. "Before you come to a conclusion, hear me out."
His views on immigration are designed to appeal to both sides of the divisive issue. As a border governor, he has cracked down on illegal border crossing, but for those who have arrived, he has extended a hand of compassion. He has taken a tough stand on illegal immigrants by opposing another round of amnesty and last year dispatched New Mexico's National Guard to its border with Mexico to stop a flood of Mexicans from coming into his state.
Yet, he has also made it possible for 30,000 undocumented residents in New Mexico to get state driver's licenses since 2003.
But because his ties run deep on both sides of the border, Richardson struggles with his answer. His political career is on one side, and his elderly mother and sister, a physician, reside on the other.
Perhaps that's why his views often don't please those on either side of the debate.
He tells voters he would "scrap the No Child Left Behind Act and start over." There needs to be health care accessible for every American, he adds, and insists the nation should be willing to forgive a student's college loans in return for a year of government service.
And on the major issue of the day -- the war in Iraq -- Richardson breaks sharply from other leading contenders. He says he would pull all troops out within a year.
'He is always prepared ...'
Not all of his views are that clear-cut. Richardson, a Roman Catholic, culls important principles from his faith, he says. Those are beliefs that have shaped his views on everything from advocating for greater access to health care to gun owner's rights. But he defies church orthodoxy by supporting the death penalty and favoring abortion rights.
Some of his views also can be found in his collection of aphorisms called "Richardson's Rules." Such things as "Learn as much as possible about your adversary. Find something your adversary likes and use it to your advantage. Be discreet and don't volunteer too much information."
Former U.S. Rep. Jim Slattery of Kansas, a fellow Democrat, served in the House with Richardson and called his methods "very successful, because he is always prepared for you."
Mickey Ibarra, a longtime friend and former top White House assistant to President Bill Clinton, describes Richardson this way: "Bill is a man who wants to see results. It's a quality that has set him apart in this town," he explained. "He is not a person who wants to talk about an issue for a long, long time and then see nothing happen," he added.
Richardson's pragmatic approach to solving problems made him a very popular congressman and U.N. ambassador.
It certainly sheds light on why others criticize him for backing President Bush's invasion of Iraq. Now that the war has bogged down, Richardson favors ending it.
That is a view popular among a lot of Democrats, but it would require an exceptional bit of diplomacy, particularly with the Iraqi government.
It's just such delicate dances that Richardson likes to think of as his specialty: bringing people together.
Sometimes it has yielded wonderful results, especially when he's dangled goodies to win friends and help gain approval for projects such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, one of his signature legislative accomplishments. In other cases, his "hands-on" style has backfired, raising questions about how he treats others to get things done.
...Richardson's persona was shaped as a boy living in an upper class section of Mexico City in the 1950s. Richardson's parents married in 1936 when his father was 46 and his mother 22. His sister Vesta was born in 1955. It's where he found himself between two powerful influences: his father, a U.S. bank branch manager, and two nurturing women, his mother and grandmother.
In those days, Richardson's parents would lose track of the boy, only to find him playing baseball with children in the poor barrios. When he returned home, a tutor would sit him down for French lessons.
By the time Richardson turned 11, he felt more comfortable speaking Spanish than English, he says. That's when the man Richardson's grandparents called "El Gringo" decided to send his son to Middlesex School, a private secondary school in rural Massachusetts where he would be forced to speak English and assimilate.
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rquintanilla@tribune.com
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