Richardson: Lawmaker Negotiates Another Prize

Only a week ago, Rep. Bill Richardson was squatting under a mango tree as vultures circled overhead, negotiating with a Sudanese rebel leader for the release of three Red Cross workers held hostage in the arid African nation.

A few days later, back in Washington, the dimpled, chubby-cheeked New Mexico Democrat was at it again, seated at a sumptuous dining table as he attempted to persuade President Clinton to nominate him for a high post in his second-term Cabinet.

In both cases, Richardson brought home the goods.

On Friday, Clinton tapped him to become America’s ambassador to the United Nations.

For Richardson, 49, the nomination represents the latest in a series of remarkable and opportunistic moves that have thrust the one-time congressional aide to the upper reaches of the federal government. While his career might have seemed stalled with the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, Richardson has sought steadfastly to reshape himself and his political career in an effort to avoid the boredom of a back-bench Democratic seat in a Republican-dominated House.

“I’ve been in Congress now 14 years,” Richardson said during an interview earlier this week. “I loved the first 12 years. And then, once [the Democrats] became the minority, you’re not as important anymore. So you seek new challenges.”

Those new challenges included what Richardson called “snatches”--well-publicized, surprisingly successful episodes in which he persuaded renegade foreign leaders to free captive Americans. “One of the things I’m going to miss is going places and making these snatches,” he said as he contemplated moving into the Clinton administration.

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In 1994, Richardson lucked into negotiations with the North Korean government, which has no formal ties to Washington, by being in the country when a U.S. Army helicopter strayed into North Korean territory from Korea and was downed. His talks with government leaders led to the release of one airman and the body of another who died in the crash.

That mission led to others, including a 1995 meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that resulted in the freeing of two American mechanics who had been held captive for four months after wandering across Iraq’s southern border.

Earlier this year, Richardson met with Cuban strongman Fidel Castro for five hours to secure his agreement to lower visa fees to migrating Cubans. In July, he helped win a pardon for an American woman in a Bangladesh prison for drug smuggling. And, last month, before going to Sudan, he returned to North Korea to secure the release of Evan C. Hunziker, a Seattle man charged with spying after illegally entering the country in August.

“You do one of these and you get a reputation for getting results,” Richardson said.

And it does not hurt that Richardson, one of four Democratic deputy whips, has been one of Clinton’s closest allies in the House. “Foreign leaders know that I have a tie with President Clinton,” he said.

Since his earliest days in Washington--after graduating in 1970 with a bachelor of arts degree in international relations from Tufts University and a master’s from the university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy--Richardson set aside a childhood dream of playing professional baseball to enter the political world.

His first job in Washington was in 1971 as an aide in the State Department’s congressional relations office. That position led to his 1975 hiring as a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1978, he moved to New Mexico to become executive director of the Democratic State Committee.

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Almost as soon as he arrived in the state, Richardson began making moves to run for Congress. Countering charges that he was carpetbagger in the state, Richardson won the 1980 Democratic primary for the 2nd District, arguing that he was at home in the state with its large Latino population because he is half Latino (his mother was a native of Mexico).

Although Richardson lost to a popular Republican incumbent, he won attention for his tireless campaigning and his fund-raising ability.

In 1982, he was the runaway winner in a new district created by reapportionment. Since then, he has easily won reelection in each succeeding campaign.

“He is very well connected to New Mexico politics and Latino issues,” said Georgiana Verdugo, regional counsel in the Washington office of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “He knows the issues and everyone in the [Latino] community.”