Posted on 01/26/2008 2:24:47 AM PST by Kurt Evans
Alan Keyes hasn’t had much luck in his current run for the Republican Presidential nomination. In 2000, Keyes provided a credible vehicle for some conservative Christians to cast a protest vote against George Bush and John McCain. But this time around the field is much more split and competitive, and he just hasn’t connected with voters or been able to raise very much money.
This year he received so few votes in Iowa that the state party didn’t even bother to report the count. In New Hampshire he polled a meager 206 votes or 0.1% of the total. He failed to make it on the ballot in South Carolina or Michigan, but will appear in Florida and many of the Super Tuesday states.
That’s why the Keyes campaign has now announced that the bulk of their remaining time and resources will be focused on the Texas primary. To be held in early March, Texas isn’t really expected to be a major player in picking the nominee. But Keyes claims that the contest may be so deadlocked that he’ll have some sort of a role in deciding who wins.
It’s an extreme long-shot, but then again it’s not like he has anything to lose by trying this.
Keyes was the highest ranking African American in the Reagan administration, serving in the State Department and as an Ambassador to the United Nations.
In 1988 and 1992 he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland, failing to win both races, with 38% and 29% showings respectively. In 2004, Keyes was named the replacement Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Illinois and was beaten 70% to 27% by Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
This is his third bid for President, after a minimal showing in 1996 and a somewhat more impressive performance in 2000.
In the 2000 primaries, Keyes finished third in Iowa with almost 15% of the vote. That showing secured him increased press coverage and 4 delegates to the national convention. He won only 6% in New Hampshire, and then spent several months campaigning and winning only marginal showings of between 2% and 6% in a long list of primaries. Once John McCain had dropped out of the race and George W. Bush had secured enough delegates to win the nomination, Keyes would pop back up and win some protest votes here and there. His best showing in the entire contest was the Utah primary in which he won 21% of the vote, shortly after John McCain formally suspended his campaign.
Four months after the Iowa Caucus, Keyes won 19% of the vote in both the Arkansas and Idaho primaries and was awarded with 9 delegates between them.
Because he was on the ballot in every primary and continued to run long after Bush had secured the nomination, Alan Keyes was able to accumulate over 1 million votes and carry about two-dozen delegates to the convention.
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http://www.conservativepulse.com/home/2008/01/23/alan-keyes-makes-last-stand-in-texas/
I like Keyes. There’s that whole ‘snowballs chance in hell’ thing he’s got in perpetuity though.
Does he have any votes in this primary season at all, and if so do they equal Duncan Hunter’s numbers? Just curious.
The one thing I wish Ambassador Keyes would do is find a suitable Congressional district and run for it. He should never have allowed the IL Combine to sucker him into that Senate race they had no intention of helping him to win. The IL GOP is guilty as hell for having allowed Obama to win there, as they ran the excellent non-Combine Conservative Senator, Peter Fitzgerald, out of office.
Wait a minute. Did I miss his first stand?
LOL!
Manic_Episode wrote: “Keyes is the only conservative left in the race”
That aside, I generally like what the guy has to say (although the theatrics are a bit much). I just want to see some evidence that he can win an election. It’s not marginalization, and it’s not personal against Keyes. I know it’s hard to fight the power when you have the same problems as both Thompson (entering the campaign later) and Hunter (blacked out by the media).
If he ran for Congress in Maryland, or for Senate (the Illinois thing was a can’t-win situation), I think support would be worth considering.
Pardon the rambling.
Good enough that you bothered to log on apparently.
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I donated to FR just before Fred dropped out and now I’m just trying to get my moneys worth =)
Keyes Locked Out of Debate!
Alan Keyes - The last Conservative Candidate of 2008
Remember Alan Keyes? A Black man running for president. There was NEVER a word in the media about the “First Black President”. Nothing. No picture on Time magazine. No blather on the talking heads shows. Nothing.
Why?
Because he is a conservative Catholic. He is a REALLY good, religious person. Not some phony go-to-church-to-be-seen democrat.
Nothing in the news about him. Deliberately ignored.
He's been deliberately ignored by his peers too. And probably for good reason.
He will be my write in vote for president.
He will be my write in vote for president.The one thing I wish Ambassador Keyes would do is find a suitable Congressional district and run for it. He should never have allowed the IL Combine to sucker him into that Senate race they had no intention of helping him to win. The IL GOP is guilty as hell for having allowed Obama to win there, as they ran the excellent non-Combine Conservative Senator, Peter Fitzgerald, out of office.
It may have been impossible for Keyes to win in IL, but Keyes did not take the correct tack in his run, either.He should have run as an unabashed carpet bagger, a person from a different state who was running in IL to represent IL. And he should have condemned the Democrats for that situation. That should have been the major point he should have made in his run; people should have been sick of hearing how the Republican incumbent had been abused by the publication of private information which legally was sealed and which was unreliable in any event. It was a dirty election.
If he had made that case, he would still almost certainly have lost - but he would have run a respectable race doing it. Having failed to do that, he lost the aura he had before of being "the boy pointing out that the emperor has no clothes."
As it is, Keyes might be good for one thing - as a write-in vote if the Republican nominee is unacceptable.
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