By Steve Terrell | The New Mexican
1/4/2009
While President-elect Barack Obama left open the possibility Sunday that Gov. Bill Richardson one day will be a part of his administration, pundits said the cloud of a federal grand jury investigation must dissipate before Richardson's political career can resume its long advance. Richardson suddenly withdrew as Obama's nominee for Commerce Department secretary, acknowledging the timing of a reported "pay-to-play" probe in New Mexico would cause unwanted distractions as the new Democratic administration seeks U.S. Senate confirmation of its Cabinet.
Obama, already trying to stay out of the fight over a "pay-to-play" scandal involving the governor of his home state of Illinois, will have to come up with a new Commerce nominee as he prepares to deal with an economic crisis and other problems in Washington, D.C.
Richardson, meanwhile, must await the outcome of an ongoing grand jury investigation that reportedly centers on a Beverly Hills, Calif., company's hefty contributions to Richardson political action committees. CDR Financial Products won state contracts to help arrange financing of New Mexico construction programs in 2004, about the same time CDR executives were making sizable donations to Richardson PACs.
In a news release, Obama said, "Although we must move quickly to fill the void left by Governor Richardson's decision, I look forward to his future service to our country and in my administration."
Richardson, in his own statement, denied any wrongdoing. "Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact. But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process." [...]
And probably the only people at all surprised by this are Richardson and Obama themselves. I must admit, I wondered just how badly the vetting process had gone that Richardson was nominated with this sitting out there. The investigation was well known by the time his nomination was announced. Given that one of the major points of Obama's campaign was that his administration would do business differently that it had been done before, why on earth would you nominate someone being investigated for this sort of thing? The one thing a new administration absolutely cannot afford is even the appearance of impropriety by one of its nominees; just ask Bill Clinton about his attorney general nominee and her nanny/social-security scandal, which was considerably more mild than this.
Of course, what really killed this nomination was the Blagojevich mess. Obama could scarcely condemn Gov. Hot Rod and repeatedly request that he resign, and then appoint as his Commerce secretary a person accused of doing much the same thing, if on a considerably smaller scale, for somewhat smaller stakes and in a less blunt and impressively foul-mouthed way. What surprises me is that it took so long for Richardson and Obama to admit the situation. And I wonder what caused them to do it now; there hasn't been a lot of activity on the grand jury front since the investigation was announced. It had begun to look like they were actually going to just brazen the whole thing out.
It will be interesting to see who gets nominated after this. You can surely bet that any prospective nominee will be investigated so thoroughly that not even a teenage peccadillo will be left to uncover. It has been, at the least, a learning experience for the new administration.
Posted by iain at January 05, 2009 01:11 AM
