The Governor New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is high-powered and high-profile. As a former U.S. secretary of energy and United States ambassador to the United Nations, he gives our state political presence on a national and international level.

Richardson—a leader named a “one-man diplomatic effort” by London’s Financial Times—ascribes his success to 15 years of representing New Mexico’s 3rd District in Congress. It’s an area comprised of 28 sovereign Indian tribes, as well as the state’s richest and poorest counties. “After participating in 2,300 town meetings, you learn to negotiate on your feet,” he told the New York Times.

After Congress and the U.N., Richardson was appointed to President Bill Clinton’s cabinet as secretary of energy—where he wasn’t afraid to tackle the tough issues effectively taming rising oil prices, allotting more than 20,000 acres for wildlife preservation, and setting up a program to clean 10 tons of radioactive waste from the Colorado River.

Richardson’s forte as Governor? Building bridges with corporations, Hollywood studios, foreign investors, and other leaders to bring prosperity home to New Mexico—all the while finding time to attend events like the grand opening of a Dollar General Store in Clovis. Of late, Richardson and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined forces at the April 2004 Energy Summit to endorse greater use of wind, solar, and biomass energy in the Western states. Here in New Mexico, the Governor is supporting the Southwest Regional Spaceport as a center for the research of commercial space travel, and New Mexico will host the X-PRIZE CUP and Public Spaceflight Exhibition in 2005. Also, Richardson’s meetings with execs at Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount and Universal have increased filmmakers’ awareness of our state as a film location. Since Richardson took office, filmmaking has brought $162 million to the economy.

Even the oft-skeptical Economist, had good things to say about the governor: “Mr. Richardson ran as a modernizer in 2002 and, having won by a thumping 16-point margin, he has duly started changing the system. He now claims the right to allocate about half of the budget, and is spending much of that on statewide infrastructure projects.”

Perhaps his strongest accolades come from Forbes magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard who wrote in June “Prominent tax-cutting, free-trade democrats are rare. . . .But New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is the real deal. He won his first election in 2002 with a promise to cut New Mexico’s taxes on capital gains and income—and he’s made good on his pledge. Not surprisingly, New Mexico is shooting up on the charts as a location to do business.”