I think this was something that only political junkies noticed, so I guess I qualify. On Friday it was announced that former GOP Presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson was endorsing Rudy Giuliani’s campaign.
Readers may recall that the onetime Wisconsin governor and Bush administration official dropped out of the race after finishing sixth in the Ames Straw Poll back in August. Thompson expected no worse than a second-place finish at the event so the poor results showed that his bid would be fruitless. Further, he was only in the low single-digits in most national polls.
In my view, Tommy didn’t do well in the polls because he was perceived as being a continuation of the Bush administration by the right-wingers in the party. In studying the issues I thought of him as a big-government type and while he’s possibly a little closer to current candidate Mike Huckabee in that regard – in some respects Huckabee most resembles Bush with regard to “compassionate” conservatism – endorsing Giuliani is no giant leap for Governor Thompson.
It’s not yet known whether Thompson’s former campaign will have any of its debt retired by Rudy’s millions. However, this apparent quid pro quo has occurred on the Democrat side as another onetime Midwest governor, Iowa’s Tom Vilsack, had much of his abortive Presidential campaign shortfall taken care of once he endorsed Hillary for President.
It remains to be seen as well how much campaigning Tommy will do on Rudy’s behalf, although the release claims that “(a)s National Co-Chair, Thompson will help promote Rudy’s record of results and leadership as Mayor of New York City, while talking about the Mayor’s bold vision for America.” Something tells me that areas considered the GOP backwaters like Delmarva would be the types of places where Rudy would send a surrogate like Tommy Thompson in his stead, but we’ll see how much love he and the rest of the GOP contenders give us as the campaign wears on.
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