Governor Bill Richardson Speech to the DNC Winter Meeting
When we were first invited to speak here today, we were all told that each of us would have only seven minutes …
Seven minutes … to tell you how we’d create better jobs, expand health care, save the environment, improve our schools, balance the budget, fight terrorism, get out of Iraq, and bring peace to the Middle East.
I don’t need seven minutes. I can do that in four words: “Elect a Democratic president.”
You’re on your second day of hearing political speeches. And you’ve heard from some of our best. Our country would be a lot better off with any one of them serving in the White House- as my Vice-President!
But the truth is, we will only win the White House if we, as fellow Democrats who share core fundamental beliefs, don’t tear each other down.
We are a party built on a platform of ideas and ideals. We share a fundamental belief in the notion that equality is not achieved by knocking someone else out of the way and kicking them when they’re down. Instead, we believe in offering them a hand and lifting them up.
It’s why today I’m calling on all the other Democratic candidates to agree to run only positive campaigns in this Democratic nominating process. And further, I call on the Democratic National Committee to pass a resolution demanding that all the candidates run clean campaigns and not attack each other.
I don’t buy this nonsense that negative campaigns toughen up a nominee.
Save it for the Republicans.
Now, I could tell you, in a positive way, that we need a Democratic nominee who’s brokered international agreements, understands the Middle East, and fought global warming. A nominee who’s served as a Governor, balanced budgets, created jobs, covered people with health care, and turned an economy around.
In fact, I think that sounds pretty good.
But the truth is, most of America doesn’t want to hear another political speech right now. And honestly … I don’t blame them. They see enough politics in their nightly news … in the grim statistics of a war gone horribly wrong. A war that’s mostly about politics and posturing and saving face. And that’s the worst sort of politics imaginable.
Our challenge as Democrats is to not just break through the voters’ cynicism … but also to convince them that we’re up to the job they’ve entrusted us with.
We’ve won the Congress, but we still have a lot to prove. We need a Democratic nominee who’s able to stand up for our principles, make the case to the American people, show them we can get things done, and create a lasting Democratic majority.
Because I’m tired of hearing that Democrats don’t stand for anything. We do. The American people need to know that we’re standing up for them. And they need to know that we can get the job done.
I’m proud to be a Democrat. And I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in my home state of New Mexico.
How many of you have visited New Mexico? Well, it’s time the rest of you paid us a visit.
We have over 80,000 new jobs, many of them in high tech industries. We have the lowest unemployment rate since 1978 … up to sixth in the nation for job growth … seventh in the nation for personal income growth.
And we didn’t abandon union families along the way. One of the first things I did as Governor was reinstate collective bargaining for public employees. We secured the first public works labor agreement in New Mexico history. And we made our prevailing wage a union wage.
When it came to standing up for the rights of working people, we didn’t compromise our ideals. We acted on them.
To create all those jobs, we first passed a specific tax credit for creating good paying jobs. We made the rural jobs tax credit permanent, enacted a three-year tax holiday for high-tech startups, and invested state money in local companies that showed great promise for success and job creation.
Rather than use tax cuts to reward the wealthy … I use them to reward putting people to work.
We balanced the budget. But we also increased school funding by $600 million
dollars … and we made sure it all went into the classroom and not the bureaucracy.
In fact, the first thing we did was give teachers a raise … and we’ve given them a raise every year since.
When I came into office, we were 48th in teacher pay … with this year’s raise we’ll be 27th … and we’re aiming even higher.
Our teachers deserve it, our children are better off, our schools are improving, and our parents believe in us again. If we can do that in New Mexico, we can do that across this country.
We expanded state health insurance to cover every child, lowered the cost of health care for working families, and we’re helping small businesses create purchasing pools so they can get the same low insurance rates as large employers.
Two of the bedrock principles of the Democratic Party are equal access to an excellent education and equal access to health care. For too long in this country, we’ve had neither.
But we’re making great strides in New Mexico and we can do that across this country if we have a Democratic Congress, a Democratic president, Democratic Governors in a majority of the states, and a Democratic mandate to finally lift this country up.
In New Mexico, our fight for equality extends to sexual orientation. For the first time in state history we have a hate crimes law. We’ve extended civil rights protections to include sexual orientation. And we’re providing state health insurance for domestic partnerships.
Some call New Mexico the land of enchantment. I now like to think that we live in a state of enlightenment.
Finally, Mark Twain said “Everybody complains about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it.” Well, when it comes to global warming and climate change, we’re doing something about it in New Mexico.
I set tough standards to reduce greenhouse emissions. We’ve invested directly in energy efficiency. And no other state has done as much to promote renewable energy – with tax credits for using wind, solar, and biofuels … we’ve eliminated taxes on hybrid cars … and we’re requiring utility companies to start producing energy from renewable sources.
New Mexico has become the clean energy state. There’s no reason we can’t become the clean energy nation.
Every one of these accomplishments can be done at the national level.
But it’s not enough to just win the Congress back. We need someone who can win the White House back.
And I know the usual rap on Governors – that we don’t know anything about foreign affairs. Well, maybe you can say that about Governors from Texas.
But not this Governor.
Last December, I was visited by a delegation of North Koreans seeking my advice before the disarmament talks. They wanted to know how in the world they’re supposed to work with an administration that thinks “axis of evil” is a bargaining position.
When I visited Darfur last month and negotiated a cease fire, I saw thousands of widows and fatherless children trying to escape the genocide … waiting in line in 100 degree heat for a month. They wanted to know why it was taking the United States so long to do something.
And the Middle East wants to know how we can expect to bring peace to the region while shutting Iran and Syria out of the process.
The War in Iraq is not the disease. Iraq is a symptom. The disease is arrogance.
The next President must be able to repair the damage that’s been done to our country’s reputation over the last six years. It’s why experience in foreign affairs has never been more important.
But whatever you may think of a pre-emptive war grounded in the clouded reasoning of a vengeful administration and a misled Congress … the reality is, we have done in Iraq what said we would do.
We have rid the world of a brutal dictator. We have brought about free and fair elections three times over. The Iraqis now have a constitution, over 200,000 armed soldiers, and they have oil revenue.
It’s time for our troops to leave with honor.
When it comes to this president, I don’t know how someone can be so blind to the hurt and anguish in this country … and so deaf to the will of the people.
This is not presidential greatness. This is a great tragedy.
America is better than this.
A struggle for human rights is worthy of military intervention. A true threat to our country’s security is worthy of war.
But a struggle between a country’s warring factions, where both sides hate the United States, is not worthy of one more lost American life.
As someone who served in Congress for 14 years, I know the power they hold should they choose to wield it. The Congress passed a resolution authorizing war. They need to pass another that overturns that authorization … and brings our troops home by the end of this year.
You would think that when the Congress realized they were lied to, they would have done something about it. Well, they still can.
Once our troops are gone, we still have a role to play. We have a moral responsibility to bring the Sunni and Shia together in a national reconciliation conference. And we have a strategic interest in organizing a regional conference with all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Syria and Iran, to help stabilize Iraq.
But more than anything else, we have a moral obligation to those Americans who have laid down their lives.
Some say we cannot let their sacrifice be in vain. But you will never convince me that those slain patriots would have wanted a single additional life to be lost just to validate their own sacrifice.
Instead, the moral obligation is to honor their service by bringing their mission to a close. By ending the bloodshed … and finally letting the Iraqi people set their own course.
Those would be the principles of my presidency. And those would be the ideals I would seek.
Thank you, God bless you, God bless the Democratic Party, and God bless the United States.
