By Michael Coleman
Journal Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON— Gov. Bill Richardson told Barack Obama he would endorse him 10 days ago, but the two high-powered Democrats kept it a secret until Friday because of Richardson's long-planned Caribbean vacation with his wife.
The governor, in an interview with the Journal late Friday, said he called Obama on Monday and told the Democratic presidential front-runner that he would, in fact, give him the endorsement he had been doggedly pursuing for weeks.
Obama suggested they make the announcement on Wednesday, but that would have forced Richardson and his wife, Barbara, to cut their vacation two days short.
The governor's wife, who dutifully supported him through a long presidential campaign that kept him on the road for weeks at a time last year, wasn't having it.
"She put her foot down," Richardson said with a laugh during a telephone interview late Friday, after returning to New Mexico from Portland, Ore., where he had endorsed Obama in front of 12,000 screaming supporters hours before.
Richardson, a former United Nations ambassador and U.S. energy secretary in Bill Clinton's administration, said he dreaded telling Hillary Clinton about his decision. But it needed to be done, and Richardson finally connected with Obama's rival by phone at about 9 p.m. Thursday after she finished a campaign rally.
"It wasn't one of our better conversations," Richardson said. "We talked for a good three minutes; it was a candid conversation. It got a little tense but we ended up in good terms.
"I told her I had utmost respect for her and my endorsement had to do more with party unity and the fact that I believe Obama is something special, something very good for the American political system," Richardson said.
Richardson played coy about his endorsement intentions for two months, often telling reporters, "I might endorse, I might not."
But as he watched Obama and Clinton pummel each other day after day, he said he worried that both Democratic candidates would be so bloodied they wouldn't be able to give presumptive Republican nominee John McCain a good fight in the fall.
"The campaign was really taking a negative personal turn," Richardson said. "The attacks were fierce on both sides. We need to stay together as a party. McCain is going to be formidable, and I thought maybe adding my voice would send a signal to my supporters, to the superdelegates, Hispanics and others that maybe the time has come to unite behind Obama."
Richardson said Obama's candid speech on race relations last week convinced him he had made the right decision.
The New Mexico governor said he did not ask for, nor did he receive any commitments, about a plum job in an Obama presidential administration.
"Nothing came up— it didn't even enter into the discussion at all," Richardson said.
Richardson has previously said that the party's 800 "superdelegates," who don't have to commit to a candidate until the Democratic National Convention in August, should choose sides based on the will of the voters in their states or districts.
But Clinton eked out a victory in New Mexico's caucus last month. So how does Richardson square his endorsement of Obama?
"I'm also a Western governor and he won Western states, and it (Clinton's margin of victory in the New Mexico caucuses last month) was only by like half a percent, so I don't think it was significant," Richardson said.
Richardson had also been widely quoted as saying that politician's endorsements "don't matter."
"It's a burst of good publicity one day and the fact that I was sought after and in the race maybe gives it more attention," Richardson said. "In the end, I don't think endorsements matter that much."
Obama, who enjoyed a wave of good publicity from the Richardson announcement at the end of a week marred by controversy over the inflammatory remarks of his Chicago preacher, certainly seemed to disagree.
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