Bill Richardson: Savvy, smooth envoy, politician

WASHINGTON — At 61, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has been described as a blend of East Coast establishment and Western individualism with a dash of Third World acumen. He combines a competitiveness and political savvy with a down-to-earth style that often disarms adversaries, associates say. They are traits that have served him well as a congressman, U.N. ambassador, energy secretary and governor.

"His personality gets him in the door," David Goldwyn, an associate of Richardson's at the United Nations, once said.

As a seven-term congressman, Richardson showed a knack for freelance diplomacy, rushing off to such places as North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Iraq on unofficial diplomatic missions. In 1995, he persuaded Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to release two U.S. aerospace workers who had wandered into Iraq from Kuwait. He helped free three Red Cross workers in Sudan and mediated with North Korea over the downing of two U.S. Army helicopter pilots.

President Clinton named him U.N. ambassador in 1996, and two years later, energy secretary. At the Energy Department, Richardson was confronted with an uproar over allegations of Chinese spying — later found to be untrue — and a rash of security lapses at one of the government's premier nuclear-weapons labs at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In 2002, Richardson easily won election as governor of New Mexico, then re-election in 2006.

He continued to maintain a high national profile as chairman of the Democratic National Governors Association and by raising money for congressional candidates in the 2006 elections.

An early contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Richardson ended his longshot bid a year ago after finishing poorly in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Richardson was born in Pasadena, Calif., but grew up in Mexico City, the son of a Mexican mother, Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada, and a Mexican-American banker, William Richardson, who had grown up mostly in Nicaragua. (His Anglo surname derives from his grandfather on his father's side.)

In 1961, Bill Richardson left Mexico City to attend prep school in Massachusetts.

Richardson graduated from Tufts University in 1970.

He has been married to his wife, Barbara, for 35 years.

Additional information from The Seattle Times staff