William Blaine Richardson III (November 15, 1947 – September 1, 2023) was an American politician, author, and diplomat who served as the 30th governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. He was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, a U.S. congressman, chair of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).

In December 2008, Richardson was nominated for the cabinet position of Secretary of Commerce in the first Obama administration but withdrew a month later, as he was being investigated for possible improper business dealings. Although the investigation was later dropped, it damaged Richardson's popularity and diminished his influence as his second and final term as New Mexico governor concluded.

Richardson occasionally provided advice on diplomatic issues pertaining to North Korea and visited the nation on several occasions, including efforts to release American detainees. He completed a number of private humanitarian missions, one of which secured the release of U.S. journalist Danny Fenster from a Myanmar prison in November 2021.

Early life and education William Blaine Richardson III was born in Pasadena, California, on November 15, 1947. He grew up in the borough of Coyoacán in Mexico City. His father, William Blaine Richardson Jr. (1891–1972), who was of Anglo-American and Mexican descent, was an American bank executive from Boston who worked in Mexico for what is now Citibank. Richardson's father was born on a ship heading towards Nicaragua.

His mother, María Luisa López-Collada Márquez (1914–2011), had been his father's secretary—she was the Mexican-born daughter of a Mexican mother and a Spanish father from Villaviciosa, Asturias. Just before Bill Richardson was born, his father sent his mother to California to give birth because, as Richardson explained, "My father had a complex about not having been born in the United States."

Richardson, a United States citizen by birth, spent his childhood in a lavish hacienda in Coyoacán's barrio of San Francisco where he was raised as a Roman Catholic. When Richardson was 13, his parents sent him to the U.S. to attend Middlesex School, a preparatory school in Concord, Massachusetts, where he played baseball as a pitcher. He entered Tufts University in 1966, where he continued to play baseball.

In 1967, he played collegiate summer baseball in the Cape Cod Baseball League, pitching for the Cotuit Kettleers; he returned to the league in 1968 with the Harwich Mariners. A Kettleers program included the words "Drafted by K.C." Richardson said:

Richardson's original biographies stated he had been drafted by the Kansas City Athletics and the Chicago Cubs to play professional baseball, but a 2005 Albuquerque Journal investigation discovered he never was on any official draft. Richardson acknowledged the error, which he maintained was unintentional, saying he had been scouted by several teams and told that he "would or could" be drafted, but he was mistaken in saying that he actually had been drafted.

Richardson earned a Bachelor's degree at Tufts University in 1970, majoring in French and political science, and was a member and president of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He earned a master's degree in international affairs from the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1971. He had met his future wife Barbara (née Flavin) when they were in high school in Concord, Massachusetts, and they married in 1972 following her graduation from Wheaton College.

Richardson was a descendant of William Brewster, a passenger on the Mayflower.

Early political career After college, Richardson worked for Republican Congressman F. Bradford Morse from Massachusetts from 1971 to 1973. In 1974, he left to work on congressional relations for the Kissinger State Department during the Nixon administration. Between 1976 and 1978 he was a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

U.S. Representative (1983–1997)

In 1978, Richardson moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1980 he ran for the House of Representatives in the state's 1st congressional district, but lost narrowly to longtime Republican incumbent and future United States Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan. Two years later, Richardson was elected to New Mexico's newly created third district, which took in most of the northern part of the state. Richardson spent 14 years in Congress, representing the country's most diverse district and holding 2,000 town meetings.

Richardson served as Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in the 98th Congress (1984–1985) and as Chair of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Native American Affairs in the 103rd Congress (1993–1994). Richardson sponsored a number of bills, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, the Indian Dams Safety Act, the Tribal Self-Governance Act, and the Jicarilla Apache Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act.

He became a member of the Democratic leadership as a deputy majority whip, where he became friends with Bill Clinton after they worked closely on several issues, including when he served as the ranking House Democrat in favor of NAFTA's passage in 1993. For his work as a back channel to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico's president at the time of the negotiations, he was awarded the Aztec Eagle Award, Mexico's highest award for a foreigner. Clinton in turn sent Richardson on various foreign policy missions, including a trip in 1995 in which Richardson traveled to Baghdad with Peter Bourne and engaged in lengthy one-on-one negotiations with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of two American aerospace workers who had been captured by the Iraqis after wandering over the Kuwaiti border. Richardson also visited Nicaragua, Guatemala, Cuba, Peru, India, North Korea, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Sudan to represent U.S. interests and met with Slobodan Milošević.

In 1996, he played a major role in securing the release of American Evan Hunziker from North Korean custody and for securing a pardon for Eliadah McCord, an American convicted and imprisoned in Bangladesh. Due to these missions, Richardson was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

Ambassador to the United Nations (1997–1998) Richardson served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from February 1997 to August 1998. In 1997, working alongside Nelson Mandela, he helped negotiate the transfer of power between Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent-Désiré Kabila at the conclusion of the First Congo War. In 1998 he flew to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban and Abdul Rachid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord. The ceasefire he believed he had negotiated with the help of Bruce Riedel of the National Security Council failed to hold; neither was he successful in convincing the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden.

U.S. Secretary of Energy (1998–2001)

The Senate confirmed Richardson to be Clinton's Secretary of Energy on July 31, 1998. His tenure at the Department of Energy was marred by the Wen Ho Lee nuclear controversy. As told by The New York Times in a special report, a scientist later named as Lee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was reported as a suspect who might have given nuclear secrets to the People's Republic of China government. The article mentioned Richardson several times, although he denied in sworn testimony that he was the source or that he made improper disclosures. After being fired and spending nine months in solitary confinement as an alleged security risk, Lee was later cleared of espionage charges and released with an apology from the judge. Eventually, Lee won a $1.6 million settlement against the federal government and several news outlets, including the Times and The Washington Post, for the accusation. Richardson was also criticized by the United States Senate for his handling of the espionage inquiry, which involved missing computer hard drives containing sensitive data, and for not testifying in front of Congress sooner. Richardson justified his response by saying that he was waiting to uncover more information before speaking to Congress. Republican Senators called for Richardson's resignation, while both parties criticized his role in the incident, and the scandal ended Richardson's hope of being named as Al Gore's running mate for the 2000 presidential election.

Richardson tightened security following the scandal, leading to the creation of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA, not to be confused with the NSA and the NSC). This foreshadowed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in reaction to the 9/11 attacks. He created the Director for Native American Affairs position in the department in 1998, and in January 2000, oversaw the largest return of federal lands, 84,000 acres (340 km2), to a Native American Tribe (the Northern Ute Tribe of Utah) in more than 100 years. Richardson also directed the overhaul of the department's consultation policy with Native American tribes and established the Tribal Energy Program.

Post–cabinet career (2001–2003)

With the end of the Clinton administration in January 2001, Richardson took on a number of different positions. He was an adjunct professor at Harvard Kennedy School and a lecturer at the United World College of the American West (UWC-USA), and also taught at the University of New Mexico, and New Mexico State University. In 2000, Richardson was awarded a United States Institute of Peace Senior Fellowship. He spent the next year researching and writing on the negotiations with North Korea and the energy dimensions of U.S. relations. In 2011, Richardson was named a senior fellow at the Baker Institute of Rice University.

Richardson joined Kissinger McLarty Associates, a "strategic advisory firm" headed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty, as Senior Managing Director.

From February 2001 to June 2002, he served on the board of directors of Peregrine Systems. He also served on the corporate boards of several energy companies, including Valero Energy Corporation and Diamond Offshore Drilling. He withdrew from these boards after being nominated by the Democratic Party for governor of New Mexico, but retained considerable stock holdings in Valero and Diamond Offshore. He would later sell these stocks during his campaign for president in 2007, saying he was "getting questions" about the propriety of these holdings, especially given his past as energy secretary, and that it had become a distraction.

Richardson was on the board of directors of the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD), which was created after the 2011 Tucson shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

Governor of New Mexico (2003–2011)

First term

Richardson was elected governor of New Mexico in November 2002, having defeated the Republican nominee, John Sanchez, 56–39%. During the campaign, he set a Guinness World Record for most handshakes in eight hours by a politician, breaking Theodore Roosevelt's record. He succeeded a two-term Republican governor, Gary Johnson. He took office in January 2003 as the only Hispanic Governor in the United States. In his first year, Richardson proposed "tax cuts to promote growth and investment" and passed a broad personal income tax cut and won a statewide special election to transfer money from the state's Permanent Fund to meet current expenses and projects. In early 2005, Richardson helped make New Mexico the first state in the nation to provide $400,000 in life insurance coverage for New Mexico National Guard members who serve on active duty. Thirty-five states have since followed suit.