VINTON, IOWA — Gov. Bill Richardson ends all his stump speeches with the story of a funeral:
After Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in 1945, the president's casket was moved by train from Georgia to New York, where he would be buried. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to pay their respects, lining the tracks as the funeral procession moved north. A reporter traveling on the train decided to interview people at one of the stops.
Among the crowd of mourners, he saw one particularly distraught man.
" 'You must have known the president?' the reporter asked. 'No,' said the man. 'But the president knew me.' "
Richardson pauses for effect.
"That," he says, "is the kind of president I would like to be."
Personal approach
It seems, at times, as if Richardson wants to get to know every Iowan in the state.
He has traveled thousands of miles, visiting 87 of the state's 99 counties. With shallow coffers and a long shot at the Democratic nomination for president, he is making a virtue of necessity.
He doesn't have the money for a large staff or extensive advertising, so he has no choice but to keep going from town to town, coffee shop to coffee shop, reaching out to as many Iowans as possible.
"I'm glad that Iowa is making the decision, not the pundits in Washington," the New Mexico governor told a crowd recently. "Iowans like underdogs . . . and I'm kind of counting on that."
Richardson's support, however, still has not reached double digits.
About 8% of likely Democratic caucus-goers say they will support him, according to the latest polls, placing him far behind the three main contenders here: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
But Richardson likes to point out that there are still many undecided Iowans, and if he finishes as one of the top three, that could be a big boost heading into Western and Southern contests, where he hopes to do well. "Long shots have won," Richardson said after a weekend of campaigning in eastern Iowa. "There was a long shot named Bill Clinton. There was a long shot named John Kerry. There was a long shot named Jimmy Carter. There's a long shot named Bill Richardson."
Overqualified?
A television ad in Iowa depicts Richardson applying for the job of president.
