After achieving a 1,000 percent increase in supporters from the Iowa caucuses to the New Hampshire primary, Jim Gilmore was on pace to win the Republican nomination with more votes than there are people in the world by the time the Wisconsin primary came around on April 5. And then, on Friday, the former Virginia governor suspended his presidential campaign.
Of course, Gilmore’s quixotic presidential campaign wasn’t likely to keep up that pace. His candidacy was little more than a Twitter punch line, its objectively pathetic support evident to even the most casual observers. (About that 1,000 percent increase: He went from 12 votes in Iowa to 133 in New Hampshire.)
Jim Gilmore, of course, was no casual observer, and he seems to have been the only man on earth not in on the joke. Until the very end, he appeared to believe that he actually had a chance.
At an Italian restaurant in Manchester on Tuesday night, Gilmore held an election-night party just like those of the other presidential campaigns, though not quite as grand. To the few journalists who came in search of a color piece, he explained with total sincerity why the media shouldn’t count out him out.
“I believe that the race has still not fully developed,” Gilmore said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen yet. I don’t think we ought to sit here after New Hampshire tonight and say, ‘This is the end.’”
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When pressed to explain how he could possibly win the Republican nomination, Gilmore became perhaps the first presidential candidate in history to lay out a path to victory that ends in Rhode Island.
“I think you start here and you go into South Carolina where as a fellow Southerner I have some affinity with the votes [sic] there,” Gilmore said. “Then we come back to my home state of Virginia, and then we see where we are with the other states as well. But I think we’re going to compete in Rhode Island, too. We have a lot of friends up there that are trying to help us in Rhode Island. Then I think we see where we are.”
Ultimately, Gilmore seemed to hope that the race would be pushed all the way to a contested Republican National Convention, where he would mysteriously emerge as the nominee, despite the fact that many of the delegates probably barely know he still exists, much less that he is running for president.
He seemed to sincerely believe there was a path for him to the nomination.
Before Gilmore decided to cut his losses Friday, there was a running joke on Twitter, after every Republican presidential candidate dropped out of the race, that Gilmore was somewhere smiling as he moved one step closer to victory, hands clasped in Machiavellian glee. The conceit was, of course, absurd. Though Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker failed to win the Republican nomination, they were at least in the conversation at some point. Gilmore seemed to be the last person to realize that he never had a chance.
“Governor Walker is out of the race, Huckabee is out of the race, [Rick] Santorum’s out of the race, you know, and a variety of other people,” he said at his New Hampshire party. “[George] Pataki’s out of the race and he was governor of the State of New York. Not everybody has achieved a superior position.”
#share#When Gilmore let down his guard to level with the reporters that night, it wasn’t to suggest that he was sticking around to highlight his pet issues à la Lindsey Graham, or fulfilling some lifetime ambition to run for president, however futile. It was to confide that he did poorly in Iowa — twelve votes, remember — only because he made a wise strategic decision not to campaign there.
“We didn’t think the demographics of the state were likely to support me over [Ted] Cruz, [Ben] Carson, even Huckabee or Santorum,” he said. To organize a campaign in Iowa “would have cost several million dollars — right? — immediately. And then in the end, if we spent all that money, where were we gonna finish? Probably fifth, sixth, or seventh, and blow me out of the race. And several of them were blown out of the race because they made a different strategic decision.”
In Gilmore’s telling, he was the wise one, choosing to focus on New Hampshire instead because he “strategically believed” it was “the best place to come.” Never mind that Gilmore couldn’t have deployed millions of dollars in Iowa if he’d wanted to: According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, he’d loaned his campaign nearly $125,000 by the end of 2015, more than what he had collected in donations. (Not to mention that Santorum and Huckabee both garnered more votes than Gilmore in New Hampshire despite dropping out after Iowa — as did a candidate who regularly wears a boot on his head.)
What was most remarkable in talking to Gilmore in New Hampshire was that he betrayed no hint that he understood how comically ridiculous his strategic posturing was. He seemed to sincerely believe there was a path for him to the nomination. But unlike some of the other candidates in the race whose path to the nomination didn’t look so bright, Gilmore had no discernible path to even a book deal or a local radio show.
In conversation, Gilmore seems to be a nice, decent man. But he also makes you wonder: How did someone with such little self-awareness end up leading a major American state?
— Jamie Weinstein is senior editor of The Daily Caller. On a lark, he spoke at a caucus in favor of Jim Gilmore while covering the race in Iowa. The caucus gave Gilmore 0 of his 12 votes in the state.
Editor’s Note: This piece has been amended since its initial publication.