It is GAME ON! Following the first Republican Party debate last Thursday, August 6, many kababayans who lean Republican have been energized to see the crowded slate of candidates they can choose from to be the next President of the United States.
As the polls show as of press time, real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump remains the frontrunner among the 17 candidates. Of course, Trump has an edge over the lesser known candidates because of his continuous visibility in the media. Others who have popular last names, like Jeb Bush and Rand Paul, as well as those who have ran for public office before also have good name recognition.
BUT IT WILL BE BETTER for our kababayans to get to know each candidate better to make a more informed decision. I am sharing with you background information about each candidate. Their platforms and programs will be shared in another column. Those who are leaning Democratic will also be given information about their candidates.
For now, here are the candidates vying for the Republican Party nomination, as presented by CNN:
Donald Trump
[Real estate mogul. Reality show star]
Trump has been a major political donor since the early 1990s, contributing to both Democratic and Republican campaigns. He had discussed a potential presidential run for the 2000, 2008 and 2012 elections, but he had never run for any elected office. Trump announced his 2016 presidential campaign on June 16, 2015.
Jeb Bush
Bush has been involved in politics since the early 1980s. Bush worked for his father, George H.W. Bush, on his presidential campaigns, starting with his failed run in 1980. Jeb Bush became chairman of the Dade County Republican Party in Florida in the mid-’80s, which began a long career in Florida state politics. He briefly was Florida’s commerce secretary in 1987-88 before resigning to join his father’s successful presidential campaign. He was campaign manager in 1989 for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who became the first Cuban-American in the US Congress. After running unsuccessfully for the Florida governorship in 1994, Bush went on to defeat his Democratic challenger easily in the 1998 race for governor. He served two terms as Florida governor from 1999-2007. After opting not to run for president in both 2008 and 2012, Bush announced he is running for president on June 15, 2015.
Ted Cruz
Cruz began working in the US legal system following his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1995. He was a domestic policy adviser for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. Cruz began working as the solicitor general of the state of Texas in 2003, and he argued nine cases before the US Supreme Court during his time in that office, which ended in 2008. Cruz was elected to the US Senate in 2012, after he rallied conservative and tea party support in Texas, and has since been one of the Senate’s most vocal critics of Obamacare. On March 23 he became the first Republican candidate to announce a campaign for the presidency.
Marco Rubio
Rubio entered the political realm as an intern to US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida in 1991, while he was attending law school. While Rubio was a city commissioner for West Miami, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives in the 1999 special election. Rubio was elected to the Florida House the next year, going on to become the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House in 2006. Rubio won the 2010 US Senate election in Florida over then-Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as a political independent. He became the third Republican to jump into the 2016 fray on April 13.
Mike Huckabee
Huckabee first ran for office in 1992, seeking a US Senate seat to represent Arkansas. After losing that election, he went on to become lieutenant governor of the state in 1993 and became the governor in 1996, when Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted on federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Huckabee was elected to the office in 1998 and again in 2002. He was able to pull out a surprise victory in the 2008 Iowa caucuses as a contender for the GOP presidential nomination, but he failed to garner significant support thereafter. He hosted a TV show, “Huckabee,” which ran on Fox News from 2008-2015. Huckabee announced his 2016 candidacy in Hope, Arkansas, on May 5.
Chris Christie
Christie started in politics as a volunteer, first on Republican Tom Kean’s gubernatorial campaign in 1977 and later on George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election campaign. Christie won his first election in 1994 to the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders, where he served from 1995 to 1997. George W. Bush appointed Christie as the US attorney for the District of New Jersey in 2002, a position he used to prosecute public corruption cases. Christie then ran successfully for governor of New Jersey in 2009, defeating Gov. Jon Corzine in the largely Democratic state. Christie was re-elected by a large margin in 2013. His second term has been clouded by the scandal over his administration’s ties to the closing of lanes that caused traffic tie-ups near the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 2013. Christie has said he had “no knowledge or involvement in the planning or execution of this act.” Christie jumped in as the 14th Republican to declare a bid for the White House on June 30, 2015.
Rick Santorum
Santorum was first elected to public office in 1990, when he won a seat in the US House of Representatives for a district encompassing suburban Pittsburgh. In 1994, Santorum was elected to the US Senate, where he went on to serve two terms and rose to become chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. In 2006, he was defeated in his bid for a third term by Bob Casey, the son of a popular former Pennsylvania governor. Santorum ran for president in 2012, emerging from relative obscurity to win the Iowa caucuses.
Rick Perry
Perry served in elected office in Texas for two decades, beginning as a Democratic state representative in 1985, switching to the Republican Party in 1989 and steadily rising to the governor’s office after then-Gov. George W. Bush gained the presidency in 2000. Perry ran unsuccessfully for US president in 2012. He left office as Texas governor in January 2015 and declared his presidential run in Addison, Texas, on June 4, 2015.
Rand Paul
Paul was president of the Young Conservatives of Texas at Baylor University in the early 1980s. Paul also worked on the congressional and presidential campaigns for his father, former US Rep. Ron Paul. Rand Paul gained national attention by riding the 2010 tea party wave to become the junior US senator from Kentucky following a tough battle in the GOP primary. The Republican was the second candidate to declare his entrance into the 2016 presidential race, on April 7.
Lindsey Graham
Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992 before he ran successfully at the national level for the US House of Representatives in 1994 and for the US Senate in 2002. Despite some bipartisan work, he has been one of the most vocal critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Graham declared his candidacy in the presidential race on June 1, 2015.
Bobby Jindal
Jindal began his political career in health care, serving as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in 1996. He then briefly served in President George W. Bush’s administration in the early 2000s before pursuing political office. After losing the 2003 gubernatorial race, Jindal served one term in the US House of Representatives from 2005-2007. He was elected governor of Louisiana in 2007, becoming the first Indian-American governor in US history. He easily won re-election in 2011 but has declined to run for a third term. He announced his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election on June 24, 2015.
John Kasich
Kasich has been in politics since the late 1970s. In 1978 he became the youngest person ever elected to the Ohio Senate. He was elected to the US House in 1982 and represented Ohio until he unsuccessfully ran for president in 2000. After a nine-year stint in the private sector, Kasich ran a successful campaign for governor of Ohio in 2010, when he defeated Democratic incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland. He was re-elected by a wide margin in 2014. He declared his run for president on July 21, 2015.
Scott Walker
Walker was first elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in a 1993 special election at age 25, after an unsuccessful run in 1990. He served as Milwaukee County executive from 2002-2010. While in that post, he launched a failed campaign for Wisconsin governor in 2006, but tried again in 2010 — ultimately defeating Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. In 2012, Walker became the only US governor in history to win a recall election, following his effort to limit collective bargaining power for public sector employees. He won re-election in 2014, and on July 13, 2015, he declared his run for president.
Jim Gilmore
Gilmore spent three years as a US Army counterintelligence agent in West Germany. He graduated Virginia Law School in 1977, and Gilmore was elected Virginia attorney general in 1993. He was elected the governor in 1997 and served until 2002. Gilmore was a contender during the 2008 presidential election, and on July 29, 2015, he filed paperwork to run for president in 2016.
George Pataki
Pataki first won office in 1981 when he was elected mayor of his New York hometown. He was a familiar face for decades in Albany, where he served as an assemblyman and senator in the New York State Legislature. He mounted an unlikely gubernatorial campaign against three-term Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1994 and won. Pataki served three terms as New York’s governor, including during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. After speculation that he would run for US senator in 2010 and president in 2008 and 2012, Pataki re-entered the political arena as a 2016 candidate for president on May 28, 2015.
Carly fiorina
While widely known from the corporate world at companies such as AT&T and Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina first entered the political fray as an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Fiorina then ran for the US Senate in 2010 in California, losing to incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. Still an advocate for conservative causes, Fiorina ruled out another run for the US Senate in California before declaring she’d run for president in 2016.
Ben Carson
For most of his adult life, Carson has been recognized as a prominent and well-respected physician, but only recently has he strayed into the political arena. His politically charged comments at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast made him a conservative media darling. Carson is making a 2016 presidential run.
