Bill richardson

William Blaine "Bill" Richardson III (born November 15, 1947) is the current Governor of New Mexico and was a candidate for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. He has previously served as a U.S. Representative, Ambassador to the United Nations, and as the U.S. Secretary of Energy.[1] He was chairman of the 2004 Democratic National Convention as well as Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association in 2005 and 2006, overseeing the Democrats' re-capturing of a majority of the country's governorships. Richardson has been recognized for negotiating the release of hostages, American servicemen, and political prisoners in North Korea, Iraq, and Cuba.

Bill Richardson was born at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California to María Luisa López-Collada Márquez (born 1914) and William Blaine Richardson Jr. (1891–1972), a banker. He lived and worked in Mexico City for decades. It was his mother who largely took care of him during his youth. He has a younger sister, Vesta. Just before Richardson was born, his mother was sent to California, where her husband's sister lived, to give birth because, as Richardson explained, "My father had a complex about not having been born in the United States."[2] Three of his four grandparents were Mexican citizens, and he identifies himself as Hispanic.[2] Richardson, a U.S. citizen by birthright, was raised during his childhood in Mexico City. At age 13, Richardson's parents sent him to Massachusetts to attend a Boston-area preparatory school, Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he played baseball as a pitcher. He entered Tufts University in 1966 where he continued to play baseball.

Richardson's original biographies stated that he had been drafted by the Kansas City Athletics and Los Angeles Dodgers to play professional baseball, but a 2005 Albuquerque Journal investigation revealed that he never was on any official draft. Richardson acknowledged the error which he claimed was unintentional, saying that he had been scouted by several teams and told that he "would or could" be drafted, but was mistaken in saying that he was actually drafted.[3]