DES MOINES, Iowa — Fred Thompson veteran actor and former Republican senator launched his bid for the presidency Hollywood style.
“I’m running for president of the United States,” Thompson told Jay Leno in a taped appearance on NBC’s “Tonight Show” airing Wednesday night.
Thompson called top opponents Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney formidable but added: “I think I will be, too” as he rejected the notion that he was getting into the race too late, only four months before voting begins.
“I don’t think people are going to say, ‘You know, that guy would make a very good president but he just didn’t get in soon enough,’ ” Thompson said as the studio audience laughed. Poking at his rivals who have been running since the year began, he added: “If you can’t get your message out in a few months, you’re probably not ever going to get it out.”
In a multiphased campaign rollout, Thompson also is calling attention to his candidacy with a 30-second ad broadcast during a Republican debate in New Hampshire that he is not participating in. He also is explaining the rationale for his candidacy during a 15-minute Webcast on his campaign Internet site just after midnight.
“On the next president’s watch, our country will make decisions that will affect our lives and our families far into the future. We can’t allow ourselves to become a weaker, less prosperous and more divided nation,” Thompson says in the ad that will air on Fox News Channel.
Thompson, 65, enters a crowded GOP field and an extraordinarily fluid race four months before the first votes are cast. While Giuliani leads in national polls, Romney maintains an edge in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Overall, Republican voters have expressed less satisfaction with their choices than Democrats, which Thompson sees as an opening for his candidacy.
It won’t be easy for the former Tennessee senator. His campaign has been beset by lackluster fundraising and multiple staff changes, the most recent coming Tuesday with the departure of his spokesman of just two weeks, Jim Mills.
His made-for-television entry and absence from the Republican debate didn’t go over well with some in New Hampshire.
“There is a genuine interest in Senator Thompson here, a real curiosity about him,” New Hampshire Republican Chairman Fergus Cullen said Tuesday.
“But that curiosity is giving way to skepticism and maybe even cynicism about him in part because of how he’s handling his grand entrance. For him to then go on Jay Leno the same night and be trading jokes while other candidates are having a substantive discussion on issues is not going to be missed by New Hampshire voters.”
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