Posted on 01/23/2008 12:28:58 AM PST by Kurt Evans
Bluffton, S.C — The man who would be president answers his own phone on the campaign trail.
His motorcade is a silver Toyota Prius driven by his wife.
His choicest sound bite — "Had I had the time and some national media exposure, I believe I'd be right up there in the top flank" — is delivered over lunch at a Wendy's near the "active adult" residential community where he'll address an audience of a dozen people. He's here in a state bordering his own, because, well, his own won't have him.
Anyone else might become discouraged, but not Georgia's H. Neal "Cap" Fendig Jr.
"Once he made his mind up, he's going to do it," said Woody Shelnutt, Fendig's neighbor and former partner in a tour and charter boat company on St. Simons Island.
Fendig, 54, a University of Georgia grad, a Glynn County commissioner and a father of three, sold all his business and real estate holdings, including his part of Saint Simons Transit Co., to finance a full-time, if utterly quixotic, presidential campaign.
"I think a lot of people are interested in smaller government like Cap's talking about," Shelnutt said. "I definitely don't think he's crazy."
No more so, at least, than anyone else who gets up one day and decides he could be Leader of the Free World. History may be littered with would-be presidents — some serious, some not-so-much — who blew out as dramatically as a Howard Dean scream. But could the timing be right, as Fendig hopes, for an unknown to fill a void many voters sense in this year's overstuffed candidate slate? Unlikely? Yes, but ...
"Nobody's fallen in love yet," sighed Sherri Zedd, vice president of the Republican Club at Sun City, the sprawling retirement community where Fendig would court voters. "They're all looking for the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan."
The bad news: Fendig doesn't offer much Reagan-esque Hollywood glamour. The good news: He doesn't come off all half-cocked Perot-esque either.
"Washington, to the American people, has become a great disconnect," said Fendig, who says the fishing and sightseeing tours he led for Golden Isles visitors these past few years were an ideal way of taking the nation's political pulse. "They didn't see a sense of commitment and urgency in our representation. I knew that when I spoke, I'd be speaking for my fellow citizens, because I'd heard them, whether they were from California or Maine or Texas or Florida."
*Planks of his platform*
It sounds sincere. And like the basis for a great stump speech. As it turns out, this man who would be president isn't exactly a political guppy. He's in his eighth year as an at-large Glynn County commissioner, a job he manages to make sound like the ideal springboard to the Oval Office.
"Being a commissioner is the closest elected office to the people, and you understand the food chain from the federal government all the way down to the local citizens," said Fendig.
On this sunny Friday afternoon in January, those citizens are a dozen or so Sun City residents. No one here knows much about Fendig, and for every woman who wears an interested smile and a button with Hillary Clinton's name crossed out, there's that guy who loudly "harrumphs" his displeasure with a response about the war in Iraq.
That's OK. Fendig has spent a good part of his professional life navigating tricky waters. For 75 minutes, confidently and seemingly without notes, he walks the group through his platform:
A "fair tax" that would do away with the Internal Revenue Service and federal taxes. Term limits for almost anyone in Washington not already dead. A ban on foreign oil imports within 10 to 15 years. A federal amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman, and no more automatic U.S. citizenship just by dint of being born here.
Left unspoken is the one truly radical idea Fendig has about running for president: He thinks he should be able to. Everywhere. And at the very least in his home state.
"The people of America don't understand that it's the highest office in the land, and yet it's the only office that if you are qualified for and register for, you can still be prevented from being on the ballot," Fendig had grumbled during lunch at Wendy's, in a rare moment of frustration.
To date, Fendig has made it onto Republican presidential ballots in four states, including New Hampshire's "first in the nation" Jan. 8, where he drew a total of 13 votes, and South Carolina's "first in the South" on Saturday. But not his native Georgia's on Feb. 5.
"There's no criteria," he said. "And they don't advertise that or promote it upfront."
*Snubbed in Georgia*
A country where any boy or girl still can grow up to be president? Maybe. If they have the planning skills (and bank account) of Martha Stewart and the battlefield vision of Norman Schwarzkopf.
Each state has its own process for deciding who gets on the primary ballot. In Georgia, the two main parties' executive committees determine candidate slates. On the same day that Fendig and his wife, Catherine, drove to South Carolina and plunked down $35,000 to get him into the primary there, they found out he hadn't made the cut in the Peach State.
A letter from the Georgia Republican Party gave no explanation for leaving him out of a field of nine, one of whom — Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo — has since dropped out.
For Fendig, the decision put a dent in his modest credibility, and in his pocketbook. He'd had "good donations flowing" after his Sept. 6 announcement, he said, but the home state snub "cut me off at the knees." He estimates he'll have to personally cover about 70 percent of his total campaign budget of $300,000.
*'God love him'*
But he's kept on going. Five days of campaigning in snowy New Hampshire. Fifty-five towns in Iowa, where in between appearances he worked the phones to get the water turned back on in the home of a Glynn County constituent. All this month it's been South Carolina, where they may have kept Fendig out of last week's GOP debate in Myrtle Beach but couldn't make him take his eye off the ball. He plans on making the most of the 10 minutes he's scheduled to get to speak at Thursday night's "GOP Presidential Candidates Rally" at the University of South Carolina-Aiken.
"My plan all along was to have a platform in South Carolina with a few Republican candidates out of the way," Fendig confided after speaking at Sun City. "That's what's already happening in this election — America is getting rid of the status quo. That's why Obama and Huckabee soared [in Iowa] and took over."
The half-hour trip here from Beaufort had taken the single-car motorcade over roads sprinkled with campaign signs for "Hillary!" and John McCain and even a few for upstart Ron Paul. In contrast, Fendig had toted a pair of his own posters in from the car to set up inside Beaufort's Blackstone's Cafe.
Most of the breakfast customers at the quaint eatery had never heard of him. But at least one recognized him as an increasingly rare bird.
"To go and start at the grass-roots level against all the machinery of the major campaigns has got to be incredibly tough sledding," said Mike Hough, a retired Marine visiting from Virginia. "But he says, 'I want to make America better, here's my message.' God love him. That's what this thing is supposed to be all about, right?"
*Cap in '08*
Maybe, once, in a political universe far, far away. But for all his earnestness, Fendig is not likely to make it to the White House in this one.
Still, beyond saying he'll "re-evaluate" things after South Carolina's GOP primary Saturday, he insists he's not thinking beyond his campaign. Well, maybe a little. After some prodding, he concedes he might be interested in working in some capacity for the right president.
But that's down the road. Right now, he says, after all he's already given, he can't afford to give less than 100 percent, whatever the cost.
"This is way out there," he says. "I put my political reputation, my family reputation, my financial stability, my personal comfort and the comfort of my family — all of that got put aside. But what you need to print is that the sum total of that adds up to less than what a soldier gives when he serves his country."
And so, for now, the Cap in '08 campaign continues. After 90 minutes in Blackstone's, he'd spend the next half-hour conducting an impromptu meet-and-greet along Beaufort's Bay Street.
One man who stopped to chat appeared quite engaged in what Fendig had to say. There was just one problem: William Armstrong, 27, was visiting from Pompano Beach, Fla., another state that denied Fendig a spot on its primary ballot.
"That's OK," Fendig said, winking broadly. "You can come across the border and vote here. We just won't tell anyone."
The man who would be president very likely won't be. But it never hurts to try.
*THE HEIDT NEAL "CAP" FENDIG FILE*
Name: "Cap Fendig" is his legal signature and his name on presidential ballots. When he was born his grandfather announced "He's my Cappy boy and that's just what he's gonna be, period." Family members have been harbor pilots for the Port of Brunswick since the 1940s.
Family: Married to Catherine, 50, for six years. Two children by his first marriage: Mary Ellyse, 23; David, 21. Catherine's daughter, Christina, is 27. They have three grandchildren.
Professional: Owned various marine businesses for 30 years, including Saint Simons Transit Co., which provides bus and boat tours along the southeast Georgia coast.
Political: In final year of a second four-year term on Glynn County Board of Commissioners. Was moved to run by what he saw as the "chaos" and disrepair of county roads, buildings and infrastructure.
Religion: A member of St. Simons Community Church, which he describes as nondenominational. On his Web site he writes of "Religion & Government" in his platform: "America was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs and principles. We as a people should claim that heritage and manifest that heritage in our culture, our policy, and our government."
“Fendig is ... a 30-year U.S. Coast Guard Master Captain ...”
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1952472/posts
http://electcap.us/
here’s a radical idea. if you’re a conservative who wants to run for president, make your case on FR so that at least some people will know you
Sounds better than Romney, Rudy, McInsane and most of those running. Just gotta drop that stupid ‘fair tax’ thing, if it doesn’t cut taxes then forget it
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.