As governor, he raised academics’ salaries, abolished the dying penalty, signed laws to permit New Mexicans to hold hid handguns, established a fund to pay for public works, supported homosexual rights, raised the minimal wage and supplied prekindergarten packages for 4-year-olds. But he declined to pardon William H. Bonney, often called Billy the Kid, for killing a New Mexico sheriff 130 years earlier. (Mr. Bonney was mentioned to have been promised a pardon if he testified in one other case.)

Mr. Richardson mentioned of his two phrases as governor: “It’s the most fun. You can get the most done. You set the agenda.”

In 1997, when he was on the United Nations, Mr. Richardson was requested by the White House to interview Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who would determine in Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, and who wished to return to New York from Washington, for a job. He was mentioned to have supplied her one, which she declined.

He often received his method, although, because of relentless bargaining and a gregarious character.

In his first marketing campaign for governor, he set a Guinness World Record by shaking 13,392 fingers in eight hours on the New Mexico State Fair. And the lengths to which he went to impress the president who appointed him U.N. ambassador grew to become the stuff of legend. Those means weren’t essentially at all times intentional.

In December 1996, he helped free three assist staff, an American, an Australian and a Kenyan, who had been being held in Sudan, which the United States had declared a terrorist state, after persuading insurgent leaders to drop their demand for thousands and thousands of {dollars} in ransom cash and agree as a substitute to commerce the prisoners for rice, Jeeps, radios and a well being survey of their disease-ridden camp.