'We did our best': Richardson drops out of presidential race

Steve Terrell | The New Mexican

1/10/2008 - 1/10/08

Speaking to a Capitol Rotunda filled with cheering friends, supporters and state employees, Gov. Bill Richardson on Thursday announced he is ending his campaign for president.

Only two days earlier, he had told a crowd of supporters in Manchester, N.H., that he would continue on to campaign in Nevada and other Western states. But in national television interviews Thursday, the New Mexico governor said the decision to quit was a matter of disappointing results in Iowa and New Hampshire, and a lack of money.

"We didn't do well enough (in the early states) to make the next move," Richardson campaign manager Dave Contarino told a reporter following Richardson's announcement.

"We raised over $22 million, with 68,000 donors," the governor said in his speech. "We built a multistate organization of hundreds of staff and thousands of volunteers. We had organized steering committees in 36 states and are on the ballot in 42 states. And we worked harder than anyone. Boy, did we work hard. And we did our best. And that's all we can expect from each other."

But Richardson said his campaign made an impact on the debate among the Democratic contenders.

"A year ago, we were the only major campaign calling for the removal of all of our troops within a year's time from Iraq," he said. "We were the only campaign calling for a complete reform of education in this country, including the scrapping of No Child Left Behind. And we were the campaign with the most aggressive clean-energy plan and the most ambitious standards for reducing global warming.

"Now, all of the remaining candidates are coming to our point of view," he said.

Until he was crushed in the Jan. 3 Iowa contest, Richardson had not lost an election since his 1980 Congressional race, where he was narrowly defeated by incumbent Republican Manuel Lujan Jr.

As he did during his Rotunda speech, Richardson mentioned during at least two national TV interviews Thursday that he had been outspent "10-to-1" by other candidates.

Revenue apparently got harder to come by as he failed to gain traction against the front-runners. Contarino said the campaign raised about $4 million between October and the end of December, which would make that Richardson's worst fundraising quarter of the campaign. By contrast, both Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama have said they raised more than $20 million in the last quarter of 2007.

On CNN's The Situation Room, Richardson referred to the "change/experience" debate going on in the national Democratic Party.

"The electorate wanted something fresh, exciting, change, you know, because they're so frustrated with the dysfunctional relationship between the president and Congress," Richardson said. "So everybody that had a little speckle of respectable experience, it was kind of viewed warily."

In his campaign, Richardson had tried to pitch himself as someone who represented both change and experience.

There had been some grumbling among Richardson campaign staffers that the national media had virtually ignored him in recent weeks, but were intently interested in his withdrawal from the race.

In his speech Thursday, Richardson hinted at that bitterness. "It was my hope that all of you would first hear this news from me, and not a news organization," he said. "But, unfortunately, as with too many things in our world today, it's the ending of something that garners the most intense interest and speculation."

Unnamed sources close to Richardson's campaign Wednesday leaked the news about Richardson's withdrawal to The Associated Press.

In an interview this week, Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said this year's field of well-financed, big-name Democratic candidates made it hard for candidates like Richardson, who made something of a mantra of "I'm not a rock star," in campaign appearances and interviews.

"It's been a difficult year for little-known (Democratic) candidates to get a break given the big three," Scala said, referring to Clinton, Obama and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards.

But, with his clever "job interview" ads that began airing last spring, Richardson's poll numbers saw an uptick in both New Hampshire and Iowa. During the summer, he rose to double digits in both states.

While the ads received mostly positive feedback in the media and among academics, one Iowa political science professor questioned their effectiveness. The commercials "were just a little too comical," Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines, said in a December interview. "You're running for commander in chief, not comedian in chief."

"Richardson had been making some headway here against Edwards," Scala said. "But then he put all his eggs in Iowa."

Indeed, according to Nielsen Monitor Plus, which tracks campaign advertising expenditures, as of early December, Richardson had purchased more than 10 times as many television and radio spots in Iowa than he had in New Hampshire. And by the end of the Iowa caucuses, there was no more money for television buys in New Hampshire.

Richardson got off to a good start in Iowa, Bruce Gronbeck, director of the University of Iowa Center for Media Studies and Political Culture, said in an interview last month, "But he ran on his résumé for an awfully long time. He constantly said, 'I can do it because I'm a governor.' But he hasn't really gotten around to talking about a range of issues important to the state."

Gronbeck also said Richardson "seemed to be playing to the national media that's here and not Iowans."

Some of the national attention that Richardson did receive since the beginning of this year involved an alleged deal with the Obama campaign in Iowa. Some Richardson campaign volunteers have said they were told to back Obama in precincts in which Richardson didn't reach the 15 percent threshold for viability. This allegedly was done, according to one Richardson precinct captain, "to see that neither Edwards nor Hillary get a big boost that night."

Richardson talked about that alleged deal Thursday on CNN, denying it, as he has since Jan. 3. But he said he and former President Clinton had talked to "clear the air."

"The reality is when you compete with each other, there's a little tension," Richardson said. "And there'd been some reports that my campaign had helped Senator Obama's in Iowa, which was totally untrue. And the call was kind of to clear the air. And we did that."

Richardson worked in the last Clinton administration as United Nations ambassador and secretary of the Department of Energy.

Richardson said he also received calls from Hillary Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Republican Mike Huckabee, who he described as "an old pal."

Brian Sanderoff, an Albuquerque pollster, told The Associated Press that Richardson made the right decision to end his candidacy because he would become a "footnote" in the campaign if he continued after finishing fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire.

"Does he want to be known as a man who tried to take on the heavyweights? Does he want to be known as the candidate who emerged as the top candidate in the second tier? Or does he want to be known as the candidate who stayed in the race too long?" Sanderoff said.

By getting out of the race, Sanderoff said, Richardson "could probably put himself in a more powerful position at this time regarding presidential politics by not being a candidate and being someone who could aid the future nominee."

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