Pompeo was running; he just lost

When exactly is someone a candidate?

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has withdrawn from the 2024 Republican presidential nomination contest, telling Fox News host Bret Baier, “This isn’t our moment.” I’ve updated my candidate spreadsheet accordingly.

This is a good opportunity to talk about when someone is actually a presidential candidate. Note how the New York Times described Pompeo’s announcement:

This just isn’t accurate. Mike Pompeo has been running for president at least since 2021. He gave a speech in Urbandale, Iowa, in March of that year, touting his foreign policy credentials and answering questions from potential caucus goers. He spoke in Manchester, New Hampshire last September. He campaigned with Iowa Republicans last fall right before the midterm elections, and spoke in the state again earlier this year. He gave several speeches in Nevada and South Carolina last year.

Pompeo also set up the Champion American Values PAC in 2021, and two friends of his soon began running the Champion American Values Fund, which could raise and spend limitless sums in elections without disclosing donors.

And on top of that, Pompeo wrote a book consisting of bromides about leadership.

He’d done everything except officially announced he was running, but that’s simply a formality. It’s a formality that can increase attention, fundraising, interviews, and more, so candidates often look for just the best time to do that. Sometimes candidates struggling for attention will officially announce earlier as a way to signal to donors and potential endorsers that they’re serious, while more established candidates can wait (although Donald Trump reversed that logic by being one of the first to announce last year).

But suffice it to say that giving speeches in early primary and caucus states, making friends with party elected officials, setting up political funding organizations, and writing books are the acts of presidential candidates.

Now, in fairness, I do some of these things, too. But, and I cannot stress this enough, I have not been running for president. So what’s the difference?

The difference is that Mike Pompeo is a former member of Congress, director of the CIA, and Secretary of State. Going just by his résumé and name recognition, he was definitely a credible presidential candidate.

But he’s also spent two years talking to the sorts of people whose support he’d need to take down former President Trump, or at least be a credible alternative. And it seems pretty clear that those folks weren’t prepared to join his effort. They saw no need to fund him or endorse him, and perhaps they saw a risk in doing so. When Pompeo says “This isn’t our moment,” he means that he needs a certain amount of backing to go forward this year, and it just isn’t there for him.

This seems like a pretty clear cut case of someone being winnowed out of the contest through a lack of support.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that the door is closed to everyone. Tim Scott is looking at the same field and decided to make an announcement at the same time.

But if the party was going to rally to Pompeo, it would have done so by now. That’s been clear to pretty much everyone, and now it’s clear to him.