Bill Richardson, a former Democratic governor of New Mexico who went on to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has died. He was 75.
Richardson died in his sleep at his summer home in Chatham, Mass., the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, a nonprofit foundation started by the former governor, confirmed on Saturday.
Before he was elected as governor in 2002, and later ran an unsuccessful bid as the first Latino U.S. presidential nominee, Richardson served 14 years as a congressman representing northern New Mexico. Under President Bill Clinton, he served as U.N. ambassador and energy secretary.
Richardson began his political career in earnest as an aide to then-Massachusetts Rep. Frank Bradford Morse before becoming a staff member for the US State Department and Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1970s.
He was first elected to the US House in 1983, representing New Mexico’s Third District. Richardson later served as US ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of energy before being elected governor of New Mexico in 2002. He served two terms before leaving office in 2011.
  Bill’s legacy will endure in many places – in New Mexico, which Bill served for seven terms as congressman and two as governor; at the Department of Energy, where he helped strengthen America’s nuclear security; and at the United Nations, where he put his considerable negotiating skills to work advocating for American interests and values on the world stage.
Over the next five decades in politics he developed a specialisation in diplomatic negotiations, skills which would see President Clinton tap him as his envoy to the UN in 1997.
The next year he became Mr Clinton's energy secretary, serving through to the end of the administration.
US state when he won the New Mexico governorship. His enduring popularity in the state saw him re-elected to a second term in 2006 by a record margin of 68% to 32%.
In his statement, Mr Clinton said his term as governor entrenched Mr Richardson's status as a "trailblazer", adding that his "career helped pave the path for other Latino Americans to serve at the highest levels of American government".
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