There were signs when Gov. Bill Richardson returned to New Mexico after a failed presidential campaign that his power had diminished. A dropping approval rating appears to be another indicator of his lessening influence in the Land of Enchantment.
His rating in a May poll was 56 percent — still healthy but down 18 points from a year earlier, when Richardson’s presidential campaign was at its height and he was climbing in the Democratic presidential primary polls largely because of clever television advertisements.
Richardson’s campaign petered out after that. And his gubernatorial approval rating in the monthly SurveyUSA poll conducted for KOB-TV in Albuquerque started dropping.
Last month’s poll of 600 adults in New Mexico had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. It was the third consecutive month that Richardson’s approval rating hovered in the 50s. In April, it was 53 percent. In March, it was 58 percent.
In 2007, while he ran for president, Richardson’s approval rating in the monthly poll averaged 67 percent, and it climbed as high as 74 percent in May of last year. New Mexicans were captivated by the first serious presidential campaign in history by one of their own.
The current approval rating is a return to Richardson’s pre-presidential campaign era, when his support ranged from the mid-50s to the mid-60s.
When Richardson returned to New Mexico to run for governor in 2002, the former congressman, U.N. ambassador and energy secretary acted like he was a big fish in a little pond, and New Mexicans treated him that way. He was a celebrity, and he won lots of likability points.
Because of his popularity, he was able to ram numerous big-dollar proposals through the Legislature. No more. In January, after dropping out of the presidential race, Richardson returned to a cold shoulder from many lawmakers, and he and the Senate are currently playing a high-stakes game of chess with issues including the state budget, universal health care and domestic-partner benefits.
The lieutenant governor has openly disagreed with Richardson more frequently since he returned to New Mexico in defeat. And, though several candidates Richardson backed in last week’s primary were victorious, three state lawmakers he openly supported and to whom he gave money suffered embarrassing primary defeats at the hands of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Many elected leaders in Santa Fe believe Richardson’s tenure has been about his own career, not the needs of New Mexicans, and they’re fed up with him. They believe he’s now gunning for a job in a potential Barack Obama administration — perhaps vice president or secretary of state. Since he left the presidential race, Richardson has spent much of his time out of New Mexico giving speeches, raising money for Democratic candidates and meeting with high-profile leaders. This week, he’s in Europe and the Middle East. His office says he is trying to bring jobs to New Mexico, but the reality is that he appears focused elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the governor has promised to call a special session of the Legislature in the coming months to tackle the issue of universal health care, something many lawmakers say the state can’t afford. There are few signs that the stalemate on health-care reform is near an end.
Richardson’s approval rating is still at a healthy level, but the fact that it is dropping isn’t going to give lawmakers any incentive to compromise. It also isn’t going to reinforce the arguments of those who want Obama to make Richardson his running mate.
There were signs when Gov. Bill Richardson returned to