Bill Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and an American ambassador to the United Nations, has died.
Bill Richardson, who made an unsuccessful 2008 bid to become the first Hispanic U.S. president was 75.
Bill Richardson cause of death
Bill Richardson died in his sleep on Friday at his Massachusetts summer home, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement said in a statement.
“He lived his entire life in the service of others – including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” said Mickey Bergman, the center’s vice president. “There was no person that Gov. Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”
Who was Bill Richardson?
Bill Richardson, byname of William Blaine Richardson III, was American politician, who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1983–97), a member of Pres.
Bill Clinton’s cabinet (1997–2001), and governor of New Mexico (2003–11) and who sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.
Richardson’s father, an American and a bank executive, met his mother while working in Mexico City, and she traveled to Pasadena, California, to give birth so there would be no questions regarding her son’s citizenship status.
Bill Richardson lived in Mexico City until age 13, when he was sent to the elite Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.
He later attended Tufts University (near Boston), earning bachelor’s degrees in political science and French in 1970 and a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy the following year.
After graduation, Richardson moved to Washington, D.C., and spent much of the next decade in various staff positions within the U.S. government.
In 1978 he moved with his family to New Mexico. Richardson rose quickly within the state’s Democratic Party ranks, and he made an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980.
Fortunes changed two years later when he was elected to the first of seven consecutive terms. His eighth term was cut short in 1997 when he accepted an appointment by Pres.
Bill Clinton to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN). He served in Clinton’s cabinet as secretary of energy from 1998 to 2001 and worked as a private consultant before returning to New Mexico in 2002.
Bill Richardson was elected governor of New Mexico in 2002 and retained his position with a landslide victory in 2006.
His 2008 presidential campaign focused on many of the same issues that he had faced throughout his political career—the economy, energy and the environment, foreign policy, education, and immigration reform.
However, Richardson failed to place higher than fourth in both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and he withdrew from the race in January 2008.
Later that year President-elect Barack Obama selected Richardson to serve as secretary of commerce, a post that requires Senate confirmation.
In January 2009 Richardson asked to be withdrawn from consideration for the cabinet position because of an investigation into whether his administration had awarded state contracts to one of his political donors.
He was barred by state law from seeking a third consecutive term as governor, and he left office in 2011. Richardson chronicled his life and views in Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life (2005).
You are free to share this article via the various social media platforms. Kindly follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
