On July 12, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson strolled along B Street in downtown Sparks, shaking hands and chatting with vendors and residents. Then he encountered Cheryl Huett of Washoe Valley, who had a booth where she sold Goodi's Fresh Squeezed Lemonade. She took more of an interest in his views than most voters, and we joined the conversation just as he was answering her first question, about health care:

Richardson: …allow you to participate in the, a small business insurance pool, so you can insure your employees.

Huett: With a larger [inaudible]?

Richardson: Yes.

Huett: Isn’t that was Bush just tried to do—?

Richardson: No, no, no, no, no. Mine is with small—it’s a small pool. If you need help, under my plan, you get help. The worker gets help, too, but everybody shares under my plan—the state, the federal government, the small business owner, and the worker.

Huett: So it would be available through the [inaudible] federal government, though?

Richardson: It would be available—yes. It would be administered by the federal government. But it would be one—I mean, the states, we do Medicaid, as you know, and that would still continue. In fact, I would like to see the states do Medicaid exclusively, not the federal government. Let the federal government do Medicare. Then what I would also do, I wouldn’t tax anyone. I think we’ve got to improve the existing system. We spend 2.2 trillion dollars in health care now. Thirty one percent goes to electronic records, bureaucracy, administration.

Huett: Well, a family of three—my family, my business pays for half of the employees, so we’re employees of our own company and we’re paying over 900 a month for garbage.

Richardson: We would give you, under my plan—

Huett: —just for our family.

Richardson: Right. I would give you, in my plan, a refundable tax credit—not a tax [inaudible]—you’d get a check, a check to help you pay for your health care.

Huett: Okay. And the next question is, what are you going to do with Iraq?

Richardson: Get out.

Huett: Just right away?

Richardson: Well, within six months.

Huett: Within six months. So basically [in audible].

Richardson: But leave a plan. Yes, oh, absolutely. This is a disaster.

Huett: Were you for it when they went in?

Richardson: I was for it when the troops were there. I didn’t want to undercut them. You know, but I was a governor. I didn’t vote. I was in New Mexico.

Huett: Right. I didn’t vote either, but I voted in my mind not to go years ago when we first went in—

Richardson: Well, I felt that to support the troops—

Huett: —because 9/11 had nothing to do with it, you know, I mean—

Richardson: And I had been in Iraq, I knew Saddam Hussein, I got some hostages out of there once. I was U.N. ambassador and I felt that we should back the troops.

Huett: How would you go after bin Laden now?

Richardson: With better intelligence—

Huett: Are you willing to go in and get him out of Pakistan, whether Musharraf…?

Richardson: You know your issues, don't you?

Huett: Yes I do, and I want to know where you stand on these things because I think bin Laden got away from us and I think we should be going in after Pakistan.

Richardson: I would have a more aggressive policy. I do think that Musharraf hasn’t done enough. I think we need better intelligence to get him, but one of the big problems is that we don’t have a good international coalition to fight international terrorism because we’re so obsessed with Iraq.

Huett: Right

Richardson: We should be concentrating on building a coalition on international terrorism—loose nukes, nuclear bombs that, you know, dirty bombs that could come into the country. And what we’ve done is, our obsession with Iraq, four hundred and fifty billion dollars has caused us not to really address the needs we have—the Taliban and Afghanistan and other international terrorist threats.

Huett: Okay. I have more but I don’t want to hog you.

Richardson: Well, I want you to come to the caucus in Nevada.

Subsequently in an interview Huett said, "Health care is eating us all out of house and home and we have lousy insurance. We pay nine hundred a month for three of us as a self-employed individual and we have 47 employees and I pay for five of those employees half, just half of theirs. I can’t even afford to pay for their whole family. And we have garbage insurance. It’s the best I can get but it’s—I can’t walk in and get a test, you know, and just have it paid for. I have to pay a five thousand dollar deductible. … It’s ridiculous. The whole health care thing is ridiculous."

Huett didn’t get a full answer from Richardson about whether he supported going to war before the troops were committed. New Mexico reporter Michael Gisick reports, "His [Richardson's] main theme during the run-up seems to have been pushing for action through the UN. He said he thought Saddam had WMD and faulted the UN for failing to take tougher action. He also called for supporting the troops." A news story that ran two days before the war started read, "New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, formerly U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday he would have preferred that the United States have the support of the U.N. Security Council. Richardson said he was disappointed the United Nations had failed to hold Saddam Hussein ‘to the highest standards’."