J's Cafe Nette

According to Politico, Fred Thompson intends to announce his candidacy for President of the United States during the July 4 holiday.

Fred Dalton Thompson is planning to enter the presidential race over the Fourth of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations, Thompson advisers told The Politico.

But the advisers said Thompson dropped all pretenses on Tuesday afternoon during a conference call with more than 100 potential donors, each of whom was urged to raise about $50,000.

Thompson’s formal announcement is planned for Nashville. Organizers say the red pickup truck that was a hallmark of Thompson’s first Senate race will begin showing up in Iowa and New Hampshire as an emblem of what they consider his folksy, populist appeal.

A testing-the-waters committee is to be formed June 4 so Thompson can start raising money, and staffers will go on the payroll in early June, the organizers said. A policy team has been formed, but remains under wraps.

The supporters on Tuesday’s call make up a group the campaign is calling “First Day Founders.” When launched, the campaign will have offices in Nashville and Northern Virginia, the advisers say.

Campaign officials said they have every indication Thompson will declare his candidacy, but cautioned that he could still decide not to run or to postpone the announcement. Mark Corallo, the campaign spokesman, said: “He is seriously considering getting in and doing everything he has to do to come to a final decision.”

I put the question mark in the heading because it’s not a sure thing until he actually announces.

The Weekly Standard is writing about the Tuesday phone call and about the testing the waters committee.

FRED THOMPSON IS RUNNING for the Republican presidential nomination. In a conference call Monday, Thompson addressed a group of more than 100 supporters and fundraisers whom the campaign has dubbed First Day Founders. He told them that he would be setting up an organization that will allow him to begin raising money and recruiting staff.

In official campaign finance parlance, the move represents a shift from “giving serious consideration” to a presidential bid, as Thompson said he would do back in March, as a non-candidate, to a “testing the waters” period where one is, in effect, a candidate-in-waiting with a campaign-in-preparation. Thompson advisers point out that the new testing-the-waters entity is not quite a campaign committee, though it will officially begin accepting contributions on June 4. On that day–the First Day, as it were–the campaign will take in donations that it can then tout as an impressive one-day haul. A corollary benefit will be that news reports about Thompson’s non-entry entry will run on June 5, when the declared candidates will meet in New Hampshire for their third debate. (Thompson won’t be required to disclose his donors and the amounts they give to the Federal Election Commission until September.)

No one thinks Thompson would have set up this entity if he had not decided to run, and there were apparently no serious qualifications or hesitations expressed on the conference call yesterday. The testing-the-waters committee allows Thompson to recruit and hire staff, which he intends to do. And he now has an entity
that can collect campaign cash. For nearly four months, would-be Thompson supporters have been frozen in place, unable to contribute to Thompson even as they have been hounded by other campaigns.

Good news for conservatives if it comes about. We’ve been searching for the candidate who isn’t changing positions all the time to satisfy polls, but who sticks by his principles. Let’s hope we’ve found him and he does decide to run.

Written by Jeanette

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