April 14, 2008
Albuquerque Journal
Big Bill Explains Himself ... Again
The governor talks to big media about the Clintons and being Judas.
We read Saturday in the Albuquerque Journal's Political Animal Jeff Jones that Gov. Bill Richardson came within an ace of throwing his support to Hillary Clinton, but he told the Los Angeles Times that he got ticked off at the negative tone of the campaign, especially Clinton's "3 a.m" ad questioning Barack Obama's fitness for command.
Richardson also told the Times he was bugged by the "ham-fisted phone calls from Clinton backers, who questioned Richardson's honor and suggested that the governor, who served in President Clinton's Cabinet, owed Hillary Clinton his support."
"I was loyal," Richardson explained for the umpteenth time. "But I don't think that loyalty is transferable to his wife ... You don't transfer loyalty to a dynasty."
We also learned over the weekend that Richardson talked to GQ magazine in Santa Fe last Thursday -- and judging from the tenor of his remarks and the similarity of the quotes, probably at the very same time Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Z. Barabak was in the room.
Now the governor doesn't strike us as a GQ kind of guy, but he seemed to open up even a little more to GQ correspondent Lisa DePaulo in a freewheeling Q&A format called "Judas Speaks."
He talked about the Clintons, about NAFTA, about his beard and about his own restless, bounding ambition to be something in the next Democratic administration. Like vice president or secretary of state.