In the case of Bill Richardson, the warning signs were there, but the president-elect apparently missed them all. How?

When Barack Obama announced his nomination of Bill Richardson to be commerce secretary in early December, my initial thought was something along the lines of, “That must mean the federal investigation of the governor’s administration has ended.”

After all, articles about the probe into allegations of pay-to-play had first been published on my blog, the New Mexico Independent and the Albuquerque Journal in August. It was a serious investigation: I knew weeks before Obama’s announcement that people close to the governor had been subpoenaed, and that the probe was focused on whether people at the highest levels of Richardson’s administration had helped CDR Financial Products secure a lucrative state contract in exchange for contributions to two Richardson political action committees.

So didn’t the Obama people know that too? They must, I reasoned at the time, and Obama certainly wouldn’t appoint anyone in such a precarious situation to such a position, so that must have meant the probe was over.

How wrong I was. We learned within days, as the national media explored the situation, that the investigation had only become more serious as the U.S. Attorney’s Office had empanelled a grand jury to investigate.

I began to have my doubts in mid-December that Richardson would make it through the media scrutiny and Senate confirmation hearing to actually become commerce secretary, so I began adding an additional statement to articles related to Obama’s nomination of Richardson that read something like, “assuming the Senate confirms him” — just in case.

Getting into a mess

So, frankly, I wasn’t surprised when Richardson withdrew his nomination on Sunday because of the investigation. This is a governor who has been dogged by pay-to-play allegations throughout his tenure. This is a governor who has appeared tired, worried and distracted for months. This is a governor who uncharacteristically ducked out of a press conference last month when the topic turned to the CDR investigation.

Ironically, that press conference was about an economic development project related to the state’s spending of millions of dollars on a highway interchange that will benefit a company that has contributed a lot of money to Richardson’s campaigns.

Surely Obama knew all of this. So why did he get himself into this mess in the first place by appointing a scandal-prone governor who was in the midst of a federal, criminal investigation?

The best answer comes in an ABC News report that indicates that Obama transition team members believe Richardson wasn’t forthcoming with them about the federal investigation. The implication there is that the Obama transition team either didn’t do its homework and really didn’t know about the federal investigation, or that the Obama team did know about the probe, but Obama took Richardson’s word when the governor assured him there was nothing to the allegations and the probe would wrap up quickly.

The real Bill Richardson

Either is a mistake on Obama’s part. But perhaps, I’m realizing, Obama just doesn’t know the Bill Richardson that is known by those in New Mexico who are paying attention. This is a governor whose administration has repeatedly awarded state contracts and handed out state jobs and appointments to people who have, coincidentally or not, given lots of money to his campaigns and PACs. This is a governor who appears to believe he’s made of Teflon and flaunts the fact that he’s comfortable with blurring ethical lines even as he proposes ethics reforms that would make what he’s doing illegal.

For some reason, the real Bill Richardson apparently isn’t widely known outside of New Mexico. Perhaps indicative of that reality is a Seattle Times editorial that asks, in response to Richardson’s withdrawal, “Why on Earth is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson anywhere near a cheesy scandal that forced him to withdraw his name to be President-elect Obama’s commerce secretary?”

“The question grates on his political fans, who imagined even bigger roles for him,” the editorial states.

Somehow, the newspaper’s editorial board has apparently missed all the articles — many that didn’t circulate outside New Mexico but others that appeared in publications such as USA Today and FOXNews.com — that help portray an accurate picture of the real Bill Richardson: one who has spent his tenure as governor blurring ethical lines and has faced allegations of pay-to-play from the very beginning.

The warning signs were there. Somehow, Obama missed them all.