A recent profile of Gov. Bill Richardson in The Kansas City Star described the governor as "a man who in three decades has never lost an election." That's almost correct.

In 1980, only two years after moving to New Mexico, Richardson lost his first election campaign to Republican Congressman Manuel Lujan Jr.

Though it was a defeat, the race was so close it could be considered a moral victory. Despite being labeled as a political "carpetbagger" who chose a heavily Hispanic and Democrat-friendly area to launch his political career, he lost to an entrenched incumbent by less than 1 percent of the vote.

"I was ecstatic," Richardson wrote in his 2005 autobiography Between Worlds. "I had prepared myself to lose: All I wanted was to lose respectably so that my political prospects were not foreclosed."

Richardson, following a stint working for Henry Kissinger's State Department, had worked in the mid-1970s for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was then he got the bug to run for Congress.

"Unfortunately the only places I could call home were Mexico City and the District of Columbia, neither of which is the fifty-first state, and Massachusetts, which I promptly abandoned for the nation's capitol after graduate school," Richardson said in his book.

Richardson began thinking of moving to New Mexico after getting acquainted with the staff of U.S. Sen. Joseph Montoya, a Democrat who at the time was the only Hispanic in the Senate.

With New Mexico names provided him by his mentor, Sen. Hubert Humphrey, Richardson and his wife visited New Mexico in August 1977 to make contacts within the Democratic establishment in the state. Among those he visited was Ed Romero, then chairman of the Bernalillo County Democratic Party. Though skeptical of the brash outsider at first, Romero later would become one of Richardson's biggest supporters and financial backers.

Less than a year later, Richardson, with Romero's backing, would become executive director of the state Democratic Party. Richardson soon lost that post when Bruce King won the 1978 gubernatorial primary and installed his own director. But Richardson became executive director for the Bernalillo County Democrats and won New Mexico friends by campaigning hard for the party ticket.

"Getting fired by King hurt me politically, but it was partly offset by the respect I got for helping the part get its man elected," Richardson said in his autobiography.

Richardson's first appearance in The New Mexican might have been on March 15, 1979, in a lengthy profile under a headline "Ex-official urges stronger U.S.-Mexico ties." Richardson was identified as "a former State Department official now living in Santa Fe." He was suggesting that President Carter appoint either former Gov. Jerry Apodaca or Toney Anaya (who recently had served as state attorney general) as a special negotiator to Mexico. The story had no mention of any political ambitions for Richardson.

But there was another article four months later. Next to a photo of the 31-year-old Richardson — with shaggy sideburns stretching well below his earlobes — a story reported: "Santa Fe consultant Bill Richardson said he is 'seriously considering' running in the 1980 election for the northern congressional seat held by U.S. Rep. Manuel Lujan Jr."

Richardson said in that article that his consulting business "mostly involves consultation with the State Department and its Agency for International Development on relations with Mexico and foreign affairs."

Richardson has credited one of the agency's top administrators, Alberlardo Valdez, for getting him that contract. Valdez, who became President Carter's chief of protocol, would later come to New Mexico to campaign for Richardson.

Said Richardson in the 1979 interview: "I've been spending the last three months talking to a number of party leaders and I've visited every county in the state already. I've also done a complete study of Lujan's voting record."

By late September, he was ready to officially announce his campaign. Richardson came out swinging at Lujan, who had been in office since 1969. He called the incumbent a "do-nothing guy" and "a consensus politician."

Richardson easily won the Democratic primary against another political unknown.

Richardson constantly criticized Lujan for missing votes in Congress — a tactic he would also use when he ran for governor in 2002 against Republican state legislator John Sanchez. Lujan said during the campaign that Richardson was distorting his record.

The 1980 campaign might be the first time Richardson publicly made a dubious claim about his athletic history that later came back to bite him. An Associated Press story published in The New Mexican on Oct. 14, 1980, says Richardson claimed to have been drafted by the Kansas City Athletics in 1966 and the Baltimore Orioles in 1968. "I never signed," Richardson told the wire service. "I wish I had. It's one of the major regrets of my life."

Richardson was still claiming he'd been drafted by Kansas City as late as his first campaign for governor in 2002. However in 2005, an investigation by a sportswriter for The Albuquerque Journal debunked the story.

Early in his career, Richardson worked hard to establish name identification. In March 1980, a poll of registered voters in the Congressional district showed 31 percent surveyed recognized his name.

Some big-name Democrats came to New Mexico to try to help the young Richardson knock off the Republican incumbent. House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill spoke at a fundraiser in Albuquerque. O'Neill — whose son was an old Richardson classmate — stopped over on his way to Arizona, where he was campaigning for U.S. Rep. Mo Udall.

Top Hispanics in the Carter Administration flew to the state to praise Richardson. Esteban Torres, Carter's special assistant for Hispanic Affairs, said in July 1980, "A young man who can get around in Washington circles, Bill Richardson, can make a tremendous impact for the state."

But Richardson wasn't getting much financial backing from the national party. "The Democrats' National Congressional Campaign Committee had written me off," Richardson wrote in his book. "I was in the category of 'Deserves No Help' because they thought I was certain to lose."

On one stop in Los Alamos, Richardson brought his mother, described in The New Mexican as "a small, gracious blonde woman who also reached out to shake as many hands as possible." His mother, who is from Mexico City, "spoke Spanish to many of the workers entering the building," the news report said.

In his autobiography, Richardson recalled being endorsed by San Miguel County political boss Donaldo "Tiny" Martinez. Martinez introduced Richardson at a rally by saying, "I believe he has a future in politics. He's a little green, but I want us to get behind him." Richardson wrote that more than 20 years later as governor, he returned the favor by giving Martinez's son a state job.

According to an Associated Press story in October 1980, Richardson said he opposed the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad. "I don't want New Mexico to be the guinea pig," he said. After he was elected to Congress, Richardson was effective in slowing down the opening of WIPP, although when he became U.S. energy secretary in the late 1990s, it was his duty to actually open the facility.

Lujan criticized Richardson for spending more money on the campaign than he was raising. In his book, Richardson said he spent a $100,000 inheritance from his late father. After the election, he wrote, his wife, Barbara, was pleased at how well he had done "although she worried like crazy about the hundred thousand we'd spent."

According to news reports, polls showed Richardson nearly 20 percentage points behind Lujan two weeks before the election.

But Richardson ended up losing by less than 6,000 votes. Soon after the election, a man from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called offering to pay for a recount. Richardson declined and started planning for 1982. Richardson won the 3rd Congressional District position, a new U.S. representative's seat for the state.

Today is the first in a three day series on Gov. Bill Richardson's run for the White House.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.