Bill Richardson Quotes

I'll spend whatever it takes to get my message out and to be competitive with these career politicians. I'm not going to take a penny of special interest money.

You're really earning the support of New Hampshire voters, and you've got to do that one-on-one grassroots campaigning here, even if you have the most money.

In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn't have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out.

Election results and winning an election is not all about winning the next election or planning to win the next election.

In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.

We will not lose this election for lack of money.

You know, I respect what Howard Dean has been able to do. It's good for our party. But I've got to tell you this: If money alone decided presidential nominations, Phil Gramm would have been nominated in '96.

People have their constitutional right to contribute to a campaign and if they have discretionary money that they want to contribute to a candidate, whether a Republican or a Democrat, they should be able to do so.

In New York, we had primary elections for mayor. To improve their chances, all five candidates changed their name to Rudy Giuliani.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

We are told there is not enough money for education, but somehow there is enough money for people to raise billions of dollars to defeat somebody in an election? Oh! Okay! Does that make sense?

I've noticed that in the U.S., when the president hits the three-year mark in office, he goes into re-election campaigning.

Where you have close races, money can make all the difference in the world.

Congressman are spending too much time raising money.

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

If they can't suck money out of the Hamptons, a candidate really has to throw in the sponge.

I still say save your money, don't waste your money or time running against Donald Trump in 2020 because you're not going to beat him.

Candidates who win while spending less than their opponents still usually have to spend quite a lot. While not a surefire guarantor of victory, a large war chest -even if not the largest-is usually a necessary condition. Money may not guarantee victory, but the lack of it usually guarantees defeat. Without large sums, there is rarely much of a campaign, as poorly funded 'minor' candidates have repeatedly discovered.

In the past, in order to continue as a candidate, a serious candidate, you had to be in the top three finishes in Iowa. You had to be in the top two out of New Hampshire. All our presidents elected in the past half-century finished either first or second in New Hampshire and in the top three in Iowa. That changed with the Citizens United, when we gave unlimited amounts of money.

I think, of course, all senate races are national races.

Indiana's ninth congressional district isn't historically known as a fount of congressional contributions. That said, if you look at my fundraising history, we've succeeded.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

Donald Trump is kind of a riverboat gamble. He won the Illinois primary; in this case, we have seen the Republican vote up and the Democratic vote down, so it looks like it's a net benefit.

Centrist voters typically decide general elections, so hard-left or hard-right platforms don't help.