January 10th, 2008 was a sad day for all. This was the day Governor Bill Richardson dropped out of the presidential race, making him the third presidential candidate to drop out of the democratic race and still no republicans have dropped out. In his withdrawl speech he thanked all of his supporters, the ones who had been with him from the beginning and joined along the way and most of all the people from New Mexico. Richardson and his main committee worked hard raising over $22 million with 68,000 donors and starting committee's in 36 states and getting on the ballot in 42 states. In his speech he also had nice remarks about every Democratic presidential candidate. He wishes them all the best off luck and hopes they do not resort to personal attacks to win the nomination. As of now, he has not endorsed any candidate for president despite rumors for supporting Obama.
Richardson fell below 5% and came in fourth in the New Hampshire primary past Tuesday and came in with just 2% in the Iowa caucus last week. For now, Ricardson will return to his job as Governor of New Mexico but will be forced by tern limits in 2010.
So what will be next for Bill Richardson? Could he be the vice-president nominee?
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It will be interesting to see which camp his supporters go to, even if he does not explicitly direct them. But what prompted his dropping-out? Was it fiscal, or did he just resign because of low poll ratings (as you said, no Republicans have dropped out since Brownback).
After Richardson could not receive enough support in the important Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary, one wonders why this highly (probably best qualified candidate) would not receive great support. Did Richardson not appeal to Iowan voters, or the many independent voters in New Hampshire? If Richardson were from a bigger and somewhat more important state, would he have had a greater chance at winning the presidential nomination? It will be interesting to see who Richardson will endorse (with rumors of Obama) and what effect, if one at all, this will have on the Democratic candidates. In addition, while many individuals thought Richardson would become a Democratic Vice-President nominee, while his dropping out of the race hurt his chance at receiving this nomination?
Paige raises a good point of why Richardson quit the presidential race economics, lack of popularity in the polls, the media's narrowing focus on Clinton and Obama as the major democratic candidates. Interestingly, he has decided not to endorse anyone despite his early withdrawl, leaving many to believe--more concretely now--that he is pursuing the nomination for Vice President on the Democratic ticket.
I was very suprised when Richardson dropped out(and slightly depressed since he was last on my dead pool list). Perhaps he dropped out in order to avoid taking votes from the front-runners. By allowing his supporters to put their votes behind another candidate, Richardson may be unobtrusively throwing his support behind a candidate, possibly Obama. Also, it will be interesting to see if Richardson dropped out in order to persue the Vice Presidential nomination. Does he have a chance?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! It really is sad to see Richardson drop out of the race for he was the candidate for the latinos. This may have happened, however, because he did not emphasize enough that he spoke psanish and was representing the chicano population. I don't think Richardson ever got the attention he diserved, or maybe he didn't attract attention because he did not make it well known that he is hispanic. Although he does speak spanish fluently, i don't think many citizens paid attention to this fact. His endorsement will be significant because he did have the support of many latinos in the west.
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