By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Thursday, May 17, 2007

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will officially declare that he is running for president on Monday at the Los Angeles Press Club.

Richardson has already been campaigning since late last year, raised more than $6 million in the first three months of the year and took part in the first Democratic debate in South Carolina earlier this month.

Toward the end of 2006 he announced that he would form a committee to explore a presidential bid. In January he announced that he had, in fact, created such a committee. Now he will get a third bite of the apple with his official announcement.

By declaring in the heavily Latino city, Richardson will underscore his Hispanic heritage -- and acknowledge a growing segment of the electorate.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) appeared online yesterday, asking in a dead-serious tone for some "advice from everybody who's watching this."

She said it was "one of the most important questions of this campaign," one her team had agonized over for months.

And the question . . . "What do you think our campaign song should be?"

The video SOS -- posted on her Web site and on YouChoose08, YouTube's presidential campaign channel -- led viewers to a page on Clinton's Web site where they could vote on one of nine songs -- or suggest their own. The songs, favorites of the senator and her staff, include "City of Blinding Lights" by U2, "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth, "Ready to Burn" by the Dixie Chicks and "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones.

At the end of her video, Clinton made a "solemn and sacred promise" that she wouldn't be the one bellowing the campaign song -- break to an old video of her singing (to use a generous term) the national anthem at a campaign event.

She added, in a considerably more perky tone: "Unless I win!"

The Democratic National Committee named the dates and locations of the six debates it will sanction, in an effort to curtail the number of requests for candidate forums the candidates will have to respond to.

The dates include July 23, on YouTube and CNN in Charleston, S.C.; Aug. 19, on ABC in Des Moines; Sept. 26, on NBC and MSNBC in Hanover, N.H.; Oct. 30, on NBC and MSNBC in Philadelphia; Nov. 15, on CNN in Las Vegas; and Dec. 10, on CBS in Los Angeles.

The campaign schedule became something of a controversy earlier in the year when several Democratic candidates dropped out of a debate that was to be hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus and the Fox News Channel, after many Democratic activists argued that the network has a pro-Republican bias.