P2016 Home « Declared 2016 Presidential Candidate « Former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R-VA)

- suspended campaign Feb. 12, 2016 -

	timeline C-SPAN organization visits to 3rdQ '15
		www.gilmoreforamerica.com Gilmore for America LLC gilmoreforamerica \| @gov_gilmore		growthpac.us GrowthPAC

Conventional Wisdom
Strengths
- Experience as attorney general and governor of Virginia.

Weaknesses
- Little known nationally and has largely been out of the public eye since finishing his term as governor in Jan. 2002.
- Will have difficulty raising sufficient funds to compete and difficulty attracting media attention.

Notes, Coverage and Speeches

Jan. 24, 2015 - Iowa Freedom Summit.

2016 - Former Gov. Jim Gilmore focused most of his efforts on New Hampshire, making visits and even sending out almost 500,000 pieces of persuasion mail. However his efforts had little noticeable effect. As he noted later, "When I campaigned in New Hampshire, I didn’t get the feeling that the voters were rejecting my message of economic growth, jobs, wage increases, experience, and national security. The voters never heard my message or were even aware I was there (+)." In particular Gilmore was critical of the way the primary debates were organized. He made it into only two of the undercard forums (Aug. 6 in Cleveland and Jan. 28 in Des Moines). Gilmore charged that, "[T]he Republican National Committee outsourced the nomination process to the television networks by granting them the authority to conduct the debates and set the criteria for admission to the debate stage." Gilmore obtained a scant 134 votes in the New Hampshire primary and ended his campaign on February 12 (+).

2015 - On July 29, 2015, former Gov. Jim Gilmore filed with the Federal Election Commission to establish a presidential campaign committee, becoming the 17th Republican candidate to enter the race. He announced by a video on July 30 emphasizing national security themes. Gilmore also aims to reform the tax code including "a simple unified 15% rate on all business income regardless of the tiype of entity" and "tax rates of 10%, 15% and 25% on individual income as currently defined under the IRC."

Gilmore did some preparatory work in advance of his campaign, making ten trips to New Hampshire between March 2014 and July 2015, and forming GrowthPAC, a leadership PAC in Sept. 2014. Still he is far and away the long shot among the Republican contenders, and it is difficult to visualize a path to the nomination.

This will be Gilmore's second campaign for president; he also waged a short-lived run in 2007, announcing his candidacy on April 29, but ending his campaign on July 14 citing "the combination of my late start, and the front loaded nature of the primary schedule." He added that "it takes years of preparation to put in place both the political and financial infrastructure to contest what now amounts to a one-day national primary in February." Gilmore also made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate in 2008, when he lost to Mark Warner (D) by a 65.0% to 33.7% margin.

this page last revised March 30, 2016