William Blaine Richardson III (born November 15, 1947) is an American politician, author and diplomat who served as New Mexico's 30th Governor from 2003 to 2011. He is the US Ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration and also serves as a member of the US Congress, chairman of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and chair of the Democratic Governors Association.
In December 2008, he was nominated for a Secretary of Commerce ministerial position in the first Obama administration, but resigned a month later as he was investigated for possible improper business deals in New Mexico. Although the investigation was later canceled, it was deemed to have undermined Richardson's career, as his second and final term as Governor of New Mexico concluded.
Richardson occasionally solved diplomatic issues with North Korea.
Video Bill Richardson
Early life and education
Bill Richardson was born in Pasadena, California. Her father, William Blaine Richardson, Jr. (1891-1972), an Anglo-American and Mexican descendant, was an American Citibank executive who grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and lived and worked in Mexico City. His mother, MarÃÆ'a Luisa LÃÆ'³pez-Collada MÃÆ'¡rquez (1914-2011), is a Mexican-born daughter of a Spanish father from Villaviciosa, Asturias, and a Mexican mother, and has become his father's secretary. Richardson's father was born on a ship to Nicaragua. Just before Bill Richardson was born, his father sent his mother to California to give birth because, as Richardson explained, "My father has a complex about not being born in the United States."
Richardson, a US citizen with birthright, spent his childhood in Mexico City and grew up as a Roman Catholic. When Richardson was 13, his parents sent him to Massachusetts for a preparatory school, Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he played baseball as a pitcher. He entered Tufts University in 1966 where he continued to play baseball.
In 1967, he appeared in the amateur Cape Cod Baseball League for the Cotuit Kettleers in Cotuit, Massachusetts. The Kettleers program includes the words "Drafted by K.C." Richardson said:
When I saw the program in 1967, I was convinced I had been recruited... And it remained with me all along.
Richardson's original biography stated he had been drafted by Kansas City Athletics and the Chicago Cubs to play professional baseball, but an investigation of the 2005 Albuquerque Journal found that he had never been in an official draft. Richardson acknowledged the mistake, which he said was unintentional, said he had been nurtured by some teams and said that he "would or could" be recruited, but mistakenly told him he had actually been recruited.
He holds a Bachelor's degree at Tufts University in 1970, majoring in French and political science, and is a member and president of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He received his master's degree in international field from Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1971. He met his future wife, Barbara Flavin, while they were in high school in Concord, Massachusetts, and they married in 1972, after her graduation from Wheaton College.
Richardson is a descendant of William Brewster, a passenger at the Mayflower.
Maps Bill Richardson
early political career
After college, Richardson worked for the Republican Congress F. Bradford Morse of Massachusetts. He later became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. Richardson worked on congressional relations for the State Department of Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
AS. Representative
In 1978, Richardson moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and ran for the House of Representatives in 1980 as a Democrat, narrowly lost to the old District Representative 1 and future US Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan (right). Two years later, Richardson was elected to the newly created New Mexico third district, taking most of the northern part of the country. Richardson spent 14 years in Congress, representing the country's most diverse district and holding 2,000 town meetings.
Richardson served as Chairman of the Congressional Caucus of Congress in the 98th Congress (1983-1985) and as Chairman of the Home Resource Subcommittee on Indigenous American Affairs at the 103rd Congress (1993-1994). Richardson sponsors a number of bills, including Amendments to the Amendment of American Religious Freedom of America, India's Damage Safety Act, Self-Governing Law, and the Civil Rights Water Rights Settlement Act at Jicarilla.
He became a member of the Democratic leadership as a whip deputy deputy, where he became friends with Bill Clinton after they worked closely on several issues, including when he served as rector of House Democrats in favor of NAFTA in 1993. For his work as a channel back to Carlos Salinas de Gortari , president of Mexico at the time of negotiations, he was awarded the Aztec Eagle Award, Mexico's highest award for foreigners. Clinton in turn sent Richardson to foreign policy missions, including a 1996 trip where Richardson traveled to Baghdad with Peter Bourne and engaged in one-on-one talks with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of two American aerial workers who had been captured by Iraq after wandering on the Kuwaiti border. Richardson also visited Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, India, North Korea, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Sudan to represent US interests and meet Slobodan Milo? Evi ?. In 1996, he played a major role in securing the release of American Evan Hunziker from North Korean prisoners and for a pardon for Eliadah McCord, an American convicted and imprisoned in Bangladesh. Because of this mission, Richardson was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.
Ambassador to the UN
As US Ambassador to the United Nations between 1997 and 1998, Richardson flew to Afghanistan and met with the Taliban and with Abdul Rachid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, but a ceasefire believed he had negotiated with the help of Bruce Riedel of the National Security Council failed to be arrested.
AS. Secretary of Energy
The Senate confirmed that Richardson would become Clinton Energy Minister on July 31, 1998. His tenure at the Department of Energy was undermined by Wen Ho Lee's nuclear controversy. Richardson was named Lee, an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, as a suspect who may have given nuclear secrets to the Chinese government. Lee was later freed of espionage charges and won a settlement against the federal government over the allegations. Richardson was also criticized by the Senate for dealing with espionage investigations, involving the loss of computer hard drives containing sensitive data, and for not giving testimony before Congress more quickly. Richardson justifies his response by saying that he is waiting to reveal more information before speaking to Congress. The Republican Senator called for Richardson's resignation while both sides criticized his role in the incident, and the scandal ended Richardson's hopes of being named as Al Gore's candidate for the 2000 presidential election.
Richardson tightened security following the scandal, and became the first Energy Minister to implement a plan to dispose of nuclear waste. He created the position of Director of Native American Affairs at the Department in 1998, and in January 2000, oversaw the largest return of federal land, 84,000 acres (340Ã, km ²), to the Indian Tribe in more than 100 years. Richardson also directed the overhaul of the Department's consultative policies with Native American tribes and established the Tribal Energy Program.
Education position and company
With the end of the Clinton administration in January 2001, Richardson took a number of different positions. He is a professor at the Harvard University School of Government's Kennedy School of Government and a lecturer at Armand Hammer's United World College of American West. In 2000, Bill Richardson was awarded the Senior Senior Union for the United States of America. He spent the next year researching and writing about negotiations with North Korea and the energy dimensions of US relations. In 2011, Richardson was appointed senior fellow at the Rice Institute of Rice University.
Richardson also joined Kissinger McLarty Associates, a "strategic advisory company" headed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty, as Senior Managing Director. From February 2001 to June 2002, he served on the board of directors of Peregrine Systems, Inc. He also serves on the board of companies of several energy companies, including Valero Energy Corporation and Diamond Offshore Drilling. He resigned from this board after being nominated by the Democratic Party for the governor of New Mexico, but retained a substantial stake in Valero and Diamond Offshore. He would then sell these shares during his campaign for the President in 2007, saying he was "questioned" about this propriety of ownership, especially given his past as energy secretary, and that it had become a diversion.
Richardson is on the board of directors of the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD), which was formed after the 2011 Tucson shooting that killed 6 people dead and 13 wounded, including congressman Gabrielle Giffords.
New Mexico Governor
First term
Richardson was elected governor of New Mexico in November 2002, after defeating Republican candidate John Sanchez, 56-39%. During the campaign, he set the Guinness World Record for most handshakes in eight hours by a politician, breaking Theodore Roosevelt's record. He replaces two-month Republican governor, Gary Johnson. He served in January 2003 as the only Hispanic Governor in the United States. In his first year, Richardson proposed "tax cuts to encourage growth and investment" and bypassing extensive personal income tax cuts and winning special election across the state to transfer money from the State Permanent Fund to meet current spending and projects. In early 2005, Richardson helped to make New Mexico the first state in the country to provide $ 400,000 in life insurance protection to an active member of the New Mexico National Guard. Thirty-five countries have followed suit.
Working with the legislature, he formed the Richardson Governor Investment Partnership (GRIP) in 2003. The partnership has been used to fund large-scale public infrastructure projects throughout New Mexico, including the use of highway funds to build new commuter railways (Rail Runner ) that runs between Belen, Albuquerque, and Bernalillo. He supported LGBT rights in his career as governor; he added sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of New Mexico civil rights categories. But he opposes same-sex marriage and faces criticism because he uses an anti-gay slur on Don Imus Show.
During the summer of 2003, he met with a delegation from North Korea at their request to discuss concerns over the country's nuclear weapons. At the request of the White House, he also flew to North Korea in 2005, and met with other North Korean delegates in 2006. On December 7, 2006, Richardson was designated as the Special Envoy for Hemispheric Affairs for the Secretary-General of the Organization of American States with a mandate to "promoting dialogue on issues of importance to the region, such as immigration and free trade".
In 2003, Richardson endorsed and signed a law that created a system of permission for New Mexico people to carry a concealed pistol. He submits a petition and receives a hidden weapon license, although according to his own confession he rarely carries weapons.
When Richardson often discussed during 2008 for the President, he backed controversial New Mexico laws allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driving licenses for public safety reasons. He said that due to the program, traffic fatalities have dropped, and the percentage of uninsured drivers decreased from 33% to 11%.
He was appointed Chairman of the Democratic Governor's Association in 2004 and announced the desire to enhance the role of the Democratic governor in determining the future of their party.
In December 2005, Richardson announced the intention of New Mexico to collaborate with billionaire Richard Branson to bring space tourism to the proposed Spaceport America located near Las Cruces, New Mexico. In 2006, Forbes praised Richardson's reform of naming Albuquerque, New Mexico, the best city in the United States for business and careers. The Cato Institute, meanwhile, has consistently rated Richardson as one of the most fiscally responsible Democrat governors in the country.
In March 2006, Richardson vetoed a law that would prohibit the use of leading domains to transfer property to private developers, as permitted by a 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London City . He promised to work with the legislature to draft a new law addressing this issue in the 2007 legislative session.
On 7 September 2006, Richardson flew to Sudan to meet with Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and successfully negotiated the release of jailed journalist Paul Salopek. Sudan has accused Salopek of espionage on August 26, 2006, while on the task of National Geographic . In January 2007, at the request of the Save Darfur Coalition, he brokered a 60-day ceasefire between al-Bashir and leaders of some rebel factions in Darfur, western Sudan. The ceasefire has never been effective, however, with allegations of infringement on all sides.
Second term
Richardson won his second term as Governor of New Mexico on November 7, 2006, 68-32% against former New Mexico Republican Chairman John Dendahl. Richardson received the highest percentage of votes in the gubernatorial election in state history.
In December 2006, Richardson announced that he would support the ban on cockfights in New Mexico. On March 12, 2007, Richardson signed a bill bill banning cockfighting in New Mexico. Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands are now the only parts in the United States where cockfighting is legal.
During the 2007 New Mexico legislative session, Richardson signed a bill that made New Mexico the 12th state to legalize marijuana for medical reasons. Asked if this would hurt him in the presidential election, he stated that it did not matter, because it was "the right thing to do".
During 2008 and 2009, Richardson faced "possible legal problems" while the federal grand jury investigated pay-for-play allegations in awarding favorable state contracts to companies that contribute campaigns to Richardson's Moving America Forward political action committee. The company, CDR, is alleged to have disbursed more than $ 100,000 in donations to PAC Richardson in exchange for a state construction project. Richardson said when he withdrew his Trade Secretary's nomination that he was innocent; Its popularity then dropped below 50% in its home country. In August 2009, federal prosecutors dropped pending investigations against the governor, and there was media speculation about Richardson's career after a second term as governor of New Mexico concluded.
On March 18, 2009, he signed a bill that canceled the death penalty, making New Mexico the second US state, after New Jersey, to revoke the death penalty by way of legislature since the 1960s. Richardson was later honored with the 2009 Human Rights Award by Death Penalty Focus.
In a report in April 2010, the ethics watchdog of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Richardson as one of the 11 worst governors in the United States due to ethical issues during Richardson's term as governor. The group accused Richardson of allowing political allies to take advantage of firms linked to state investment, rewarding close associates with state positions or benefits (including providing old friends and political supporters with expensive state contracts), and allowing activities paid to play in his government. They also argue that he failed in an effort to make the state government more transparent.
In December 2010, while still serving as governor, Richardson returned to North Korea in an unofficial capacity at the invitation of North North nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan. After arriving in Pyongyang on December 16, Richardson told reporters that "the goal is to see if we can reduce the tension on the Korean peninsula, that is my goal.I will have a series of talks with North Korean officials here and I look forward to my discussions, "he said. On December 19, Richardson said his talks with North Korean officials made "some progress" in trying to resolve what he called a "very tense" situation. Speaking from Pyongyang, Richardson told US television network CNN that a North Korean general he met accepted his proposal to establish a hotline between North Korean and South Korean troops, and also open to his idea for a military commission to monitor disputes in and around the Yellow Sea.
After returning from North Korea, Richardson handled the issue of forgiveness for William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, for killing Sheriff William J. Brady from Lincoln County, New Mexico, about 130 years ago. Following a promise of pardon at the time by Governor Lew Wallace, Richardson said he could not forgive Bonney posthumously because he did not want to guess his predecessor's decisions. "That's a very close call," Richardson said. "Romanticism urges me to issue forgiveness, but facts and evidence do not support it."
Richardson's second term in office ended in 2011 and he has a time limit from the further term as governor.
2008 presidential campaign
Richardson was the nominee for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election but came out on January 10, 2008 after a lackluster performance in the main and first caucuses. Despite his long history and friendship with the Clinton family, Richardson supported Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination on March 21, 2008, instead of Hillary Clinton. Clinton commentator James Carville famously compares Richardson with Judas Iscariot to move. Richardson replied in a Washington Post article, feeling "forced to defend [himself] against character assassinations and baseless allegations."
Richardson is a vice presidential candidate for Senatorial nominee and Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, and fully reviewed by Obama's campaign, before Obama elects Joe Biden on August 23, 2008.
Secretary of Trade nomination
After Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, Richardson's name is often mentioned as a possible cabinet appointment within the Obama administration to come. Most of this speculation surrounds the position of the Secretary of State, given Richardson's background as a diplomat. Richardson did not comment on the speculation. Hillary Clinton is Obama's candidate for the Secretary of State.
Richardson is also being considered for the position of Secretary of Commerce. On December 3, 2008, Obama tapped Richardson for the post. On January 4, 2009, Richardson revoked his name as a Trade Minister nomination for a federal grand jury investigation on charges of pay to play. The New York Times has reported by the end of December that a grand jury investigation issue will be filed at a Richardson confirmation hearing. Then, in August 2009, Justice Department officials decided not to seek indictments.
Allegations of corruption
During the hearing 2012 United States v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, former CDR employee Doug Goldberg testified that he was involved in contributing Bill Richardson's $ 100,000 campaign in exchange for his company's CDR. hired to handle a $ 400 million exchange deal for the New Mexico state government.
During his testimony, Doug Goldberg declared that he had been given an envelope of $ 25,000 checks paid to Moving America Forward, Bill Richardson's political action committee, by his superiors Stewart Wolmark and told to hand him to fundraising Bill Richardson. When Goldberg handed the envelope to Richardson, he allegedly told Goldberg to "Tell the big guy [Stewart Wolmark] I will hire you".
Goldberg went on to testify that the CDR was employed but he later learned that another company was hired by Richardson to do the actual work it needed and that Steward Wolmark had given Richardson a further $ 75,000 contribution.
Post-governor career
In 2011, Richardson joined the global corporate council of APCO Global Political Strategies as chairman, World Resources Institute, National Council for Science and Environment, and Abengoa (international advisory board). He was also appointed as a special envoy to the Organization of American States.
In 2012, Richardson joins the advisory board of Grow Energy and Refugees International. He is also a member of the Washington DC, Western Hemispheric thinking institution, Inter-American Dialogue.
North Korea
Richardson has long been interested in North Korea. He visited several times, and has been involved in negotiations with leadership there since the early 1990s. In 1996, he accompanied US State Department officials and successfully negotiated the release of Evan Hunziker, the first American civilian captured by North Korea on espionage charges since the end of the Korean War.
Richardson formed a foundation, Richardson Center, to help negotiate the release of political prisoners globally. In January 2013, he led a delegation of business leaders, including Google chairman Eric Schmidt, shortly after the country launched an orbital rocket. Richardson called the trip a "personal, humanitarian" mission by US citizens and told the Associated Press that he would talk to North Korean officials about the detention of Kenneth Bae, a US citizen accused of "hostile" acts against the state, and attempted to visit America.
In March 2016, at the request of Ohio Governor John Kasich, Richardson sought to negotiate for the release of Cincinnati college student Otto Warmbier, who had been arrested on a visit to North Korea.
Electric vehicle charging stations
In December 2012, Richardson became Chairman of the Board of Directors of Car Charging Group, the largest independent owner and operator of public electric vehicle charging stations in the United States. In 2013 Richardson joined the Advisory Board for the Fuel Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit campaign that advocates the end of an oil monopoly.
Speech view
In 2017, Richardson attends and speaks at the Eurasia Media Forum in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Publications
Richardson has written three books:
- Between the World: The Making of American Life , autobiography, published March 2005 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, written with Michael Ruby ISBN: 0399153241
- Leading by Example: How We Can Inspire The Energy and Security Revolution , released October 2007
- How to Talk with the Sharks: Strategies and Stories from the Primary Negotiator , published October 15, 2013 by Rodale Books, written with Kevin Bleyer.
Article:
- Universal Transparency: Goal for US at Nuclear Security Summit 2012 , published January 2011, Weapon Control Today ; Bill Richardson with Gay Dillingham, Charles Streeper, and Arjun Makhijani
- Sweep Dirty Bombs , published Fall 2011, Federation of American Scientists; Bill Richardson, Charles Streeper, and Margaritas Sevcik
See also
- Bill Richardson's selection history
- William Barloon
- Hispanic List and Latin America in the United States Congress
- Missing nomination for United States Cabinet
References
External links
- Official website
- Biography at Directory of Congressional Biographies of the United States
- Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Electoral Commission
- Financial information (federal office) at OpenSecrets.org
- Appearance in C-SPAN
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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