The candidates: Bill Richardson and the Latino vote | The man from New Mexico

“BILL RICHARDSON is the strongest second-tier contender for the Democratic nomination, and the only one with any hope of challenging the big three””Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards. He has two main selling points. One is his resumé””which includes an incident in which he offended Saddam Hussein by showing him the sole of his shoe. The other is that, despite his name, he is Hispanic. (His mother is Mexican and, though he was born in California, he lived in Mexico until he was a teenager.)

Mr Richardson’s resumé certainly sounds presidential. After 14 years in Congress, he was America’s ambassador to the United Nations. He has run a large federal bureaucracy (as Bill Clinton’s energy secretary), and a state (he is currently the governor of New Mexico). The contrast with the big three is striking. Neither Mr Obama nor Mr Edwards has ever run anything much, and Mrs Clinton’s main qualification””eight years as the unofficial chief adviser to a president””is marred for some voters by the fact that she was married to him. One of Mr Richardson’s more amusing campaign ads shows him at a job interview where the interviewer shrugs: “For what we’re looking for, you might be a little over-qualified.””

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