At the end of June, Gov. Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign was on fire.
He had been climbing rapidly in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire and was statistically tied with John Edwards for third place in the Granite State. He raised a respectable $7 million in the second quarter of the year. Some said he had joined the top tier of Democratic candidates.
Richardson continued climbing in July, gaining ground in Iowa on the third-place Barack Obama. But a lot went wrong for Richardson in August, and his campaign has stagnated.
Richardson has made a number of statements in recent weeks that made him appear exhausted, unprepared and unpresidential. Among the most damaging:
• On Aug. 9, Richardson said at a gay-rights forum that homosexuality is a choice. Though he later apologized, saying he believes homosexuality is biological and he misspoke because he was tired, his comments disappointed and confused many in the gay and lesbian community.
• On a radio show the day after the forum, Richardson said, when asked if love between a man and a man is beautiful, that “gay relationships are… love.” He then said he is “for gays having relationships with undocumented workers.”
• Some were angry after Richardson said last Monday that it was God’s will that Iowa hold the first caucuses in the nation. He later said it was an “off-the-cuff comment” and admitted he was “trying to score points.”
To try to minimize the damage, Richardson started joking that he’s making “one mistake a week.” It hasn’t helped. A television reporter who interviewed Richardson about the God remark prefaced his question by saying, “As you’ve joked, you’re making a mistake a week. Maybe you got it out of the way early this week.”
Not the degree of respect the candidate with the best résumé should command. But the mistakes and Richardson’s pandering are taking the focus off his experience.
Last week, one nationally influential liberal blogger wrote that Richardson “has demonstrated a keen ability to stick his foot in his mouth,” while another wrote that he’s “becoming the buffoon of this campaign.” To make matters worse, Richardson has lost several coveted union endorsements to other candidates in recent weeks.
Averages of recent polls put his campaign at about 12 percent in Iowa, 10 points behind the third-place Obama, and at just under 10 percent in New Hampshire, three points behind Edwards.
As his poll numbers have stagnated in recent weeks, Richardson has begun portraying himself as the candidate of experience and change, claiming he has the best of what both Hillary Clinton and Obama offer. He has focused on his plan to withdraw every American soldier from Iraq and suggested that the Democratic frontrunners are not being honest with the American people about what they would do in Iraq. It’s a sign that Richardson may be getting desperate, since he initially promised not to attack Democratic opponents.
Richardson’s early success in the campaign has come to a screeching halt. With national reporters making jokes and influential bloggers saying Richardson is the joke, the governor is struggling to counter arguments that he isn’t ready for the big time.
A version of this article was published today in the Albuquerque Tribune. I write a column for the newspaper that runs on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month.
At the end of June, Gov. Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign was on fire.