For most of 2007, millionaire businessman John Cox traveled the early primary states in support of his self-financed Republican Presidential campaign. He spoke at events, participated in straw polls, and had paid staff in several states, before the more “serious” candidates were even established.
The Weekly Standard declared him the sane fringe candidate.
But he was shut out of all the major televised debates. The media largely ignored him. And late last year it seemed as if he given up. Many states were refusing to place him on their primary ballots and he had exausted at least a million dollars of his own money with practically nothing to show for it. On October 27, 2007, Cox “all but conceded defeat” during the annual Reagan Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, sponsored by the Republican Party of Iowa.
However, Cox then told the media that he would stick it out through the early primaries and continue to fight for the conservative positions he holds. Then, on December 19, 2007, Cox told Chicago Tribune reporter Eric Zorn that he had closed his campaign offices in late November, and said competing in the presidential race was a lost cause. Finally, at the end of December Cox was quoted as saying he would continue to try and have an impact on the race in the states where he had already qualified for the ballot.
In Iowa, the state party reported no results for Cox… suggesting he recieved only a smattering of votes. In New Hampshire, Cox polled only about 40 votes.
But Cox is on the ballot today in South Carolina and he is apparently campaigning there in some capacity. I had a chuckle this morning when looking at today’s CNN election coverage and seeing several John Cox signs prominently placed in the center of the graphic…
Cox will be one of a trio of lesser known Republicans who paid the hefty fee to qualify for today’s SC primary. The others are local Georgia politician Cap Fendig and conservative activist Hugh Cort. Like Cox, both of these candidates receieved no measurable support in Iowa and only a few dozen votes in New Hampshire.
Find out more about these third-tier candidates…
—> John Cox for President
—> Cap Fending for President
—> Dr. Hugh Cort for President
January 19th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Cox can’t seem to admit that he lost. It’s not because of lack of exposure that he’s not doing well, though that’s how he self-servingly spins it these days.
I know several former members of his staff and they all say that over 18 months of campaigning, he was on TV, radio and in the paper A LOT in early primary states - NH, Iowa and SC among them. He was even on FOX and Friends and MSNBC a couple of times. But that he blew these opportunities by angrily lashing out at the national media at every turn.
What he never realized was that if he started to make a good (positive) impression on small groups, and then turned them into BIG groups, then the state and national media would give him some respect.
Instead, he because increasingly angry during his radio appearances, and was eventually not invited back to many stations and papers in Iowa. He also has made increasingly odd, confusing and frankly depressing statements to media that indicated that he was out of the race - as this posting notes. The long and the short of it is that he simply doesn’t have what it takes to be a good candidate. The fact that he had zero experience in even a LOCAL elective office didn’t help either.