ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Dems need Hispanic vote to win in '08
Don't bet your last cent that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential candidate. Judging from the growing electoral power of Hispanics, we may see New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson -- the fully bilingual son of a Mexican socialite -- take that spot.
Wait till you hear what he told me, and what I make of it. But first, let's look at the facts: It will be very difficult for Democrats to win the White House in four years unless they recover the Hispanic votes they lost to President Bush in last week's election.
Bush got a record 44 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, up from 35 percent in the 2000 election, according to the Edison/Mitofsky National Exit Poll.
If that poll is correct, it means that for the first time, the Hispanic vote -- which used to go overwhelmingly to the Democratic Party -- is up for grabs.
And no major Democratic figure nationwide is better positioned to recover the party's Hispanic vote than Gov. Richardson, a former Clinton administration energy secretary, who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and for 15 years as a New Mexico congressman.
"He is a national leader of the Democratic Party who happens to be Hispanic, and not just a major Hispanic leader," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, a Washington centrist Democratic Party support group.
"It will be significant when he runs, because you will have a truly bilingual candidate."
Among Richardson's pluses:
UHe can't be accused of being a "Northeastern liberal," the Republicans' favorite line to discredit recent Democratic candidates. Democrats will have to make inroads in the Bush-controlled South and Southwest if they want to win in 2008. In fact, the last two Democrats who got to the White House -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- where Southerners. In addition to hailing from the Southwest, Richardson cut taxes in New Mexico in 2003, and now boasts leading one of the few U.S. states with a budget surplus.
UHe's a governor, as were Clinton and Carter, so he can claim executive experience. This year's Democratic ticket was made up of two senators.
UHe's fully bilingual. Unlike Bush, who despite speaking some Spanish must still wear simultaneous translation ear sets at inter-American summits, Richardson speaks fluent Spanish.
When I called Richardson earlier this week and asked him whether he would run, he told me, "My main concentration is the New Mexico Legislature in January, and my re-election as governor in 2006. Beyond that, who knows?"
My translation: He's running like crazy. Granted, Richardson has his minuses. He lost New Mexico for the Democratic Party this time, triggering criticism from the Kerry camp that he didn't campaign hard enough in the northern part of the state, where religious leaders swayed many votes toward the Republican Party.
But, then, Kerry's vice-presidential candidate, Sen. John Edwards, didn't carry his own state, North Carolina. And his critics will dust off the 2000 story of two computer hard drives that disappeared from the Los Alamos National Laboratory when the site was threatened by nearby wildfires during Richardson's stint as energy secretary. But after the U.S. security and intelligence failures that followed, that security lapse will look like small potatoes.
What may be more damaging to Richardson is the outdated party nomination system, by which the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries -- in two of the most Anglo-Saxon-dominated places on the U.S. map -- play a significant role in determining presidential nominees. It's no coincidence that Democrats keep nominating Northeastern politicians, and losing the South.
Richardson is leading an effort by four Western states -- New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona -- to hold a regional primary in the first week in February 2008, shortly after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Most of these states have large Hispanic populations and can be won by either party.
My conclusion: Keep an eye on Richardson. If he's not the No. 1 on the Democratic ticket, he has the best chances of being the No. 2.
X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.