Guy W. Farmer writes in the Nevada Appeal “as a registered Democrat who is thoroughly disillusioned with President Bush and the Republicans” and says he’s looking for a moderate Democrat to back for president in 2008 – someone like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who made an early campaign stop in Minden late last month.
I’ve admired Richardson ever since he was a bright young congressman while I was still serving in the U.S. Foreign Service. Knowledgeable about foreign affairs and a centrist on domestic policy, he reminds me of the Democratic senator I admired as I grew up in Seattle, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who fought international communism as hard as he fought for compassionate social programs.
A foreign policy moderate, Richardson has had some success in the international arena. Most recently, as one of the few American politicians the North Koreans will meet with, he went there to urge that nation’s Communist leaders to give up their destabilizing nuclear weapons program.
As President Clinton’s United Nations ambassador, Richardson earned the respect of the international community and has served both Democratic and Republican presidents as an effective, low-key global trouble-shooter. Moreover, as Clinton’s Energy Secretary he dealt with western land and water issues, and understood Nevada’s implacable opposition to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is on life support now that powerful Nevada Democrat Harry Reid is the Senate Majority Leader.
Although Richardson is Hispanic – the son of an American father and a Mexican mother – he doesn’t wear his ethnicity on his sleeve, and neither does another Democratic presidential candidate, African-American Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Wisely, they choose not to campaign as hyphenated Americans, and that’s a good thing.
More often than not, presidential candidates are elite Easterners who don’t connect with Western voters. Most of the 18 (!) politicians who have already announced for president are Easterners or Southerners who know little if anything about the West – people like Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, who probably couldn’t find Yucca Mountain on a map if their life depended on it. But Mrs. Clinton, Edwards, Obama and Richardson will know where Nevada is by next January when they’ll compete head-to-head in statewide Democratic caucuses sandwiched between the Iowa caucuses and the all-important New Hampshire primary.