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Sam Clovis Joins The Senate Primary: Info & Analysis

Sam Clovis Joins The Senate Primary: Info & Analysis

Sam Clovis 2The field of Republican candidates seeking a seat in the U.S. Senate from Iowa has expanded to three.  At an event held Monday in Sioux City, Morningside professor and talk radio host Sam Clovis announced he is joining Matt Whitaker and David Young in the Republican primary.

The field is expected to become more crowded in coming weeks as Politico recently reported that State Senator Joni Ernst has hired a Texas-based political strategist.  Additionally word is spreading that a Libertarian candidate will also declare soon—later this week we will be discussing this in more detail.

Background and Bio

Though many in central and eastern Iowa are likely unfamiliar with him, Sam Clovis is fairly well known in the very Conservative north-western region of Iowa.  While currently serving as the Chair of the Department of Business Administration and Economics at Morningside College and hosting a political radio show on KSJC 1360, he has a long military and business background to tout.

After graduating from the United States Air Force Academy, he attended universities in San Francisco and Alabama and has worked for several private companies–including defense industry giant  Booz Allen Hamilton (ironically the same company that employed last week’s NSA leaker).  There is a ton of stuff in his background and I won’t list it all here—for a longer and itemized account of Clovis’ history click here and you can view his campaign website iowans4samclovis.com here.

The Race: A Quick Analysis

Besides adding one more candidate and all the dynamics that go along with it, Clovis has already indicated he will be staking out a position that any non-libertarian candidate likely won’t get to the right of.  It’s way too early to tell how much of a statewide network he will be able to build or if he will be able to raise the money necessary to introduce himself statewide–but he will have an impact regardless.

Aside from making the 35% number to avoid a convention harder to get to for any one of them—a candidate willing to run far-right will most likely end up giving the “establishment” contenders hoping to run middle-right some severe heartburn—a condition that otherwise might not have befallen them.  Even if his campaign never fully takes off, and if he chooses to, Clovis will be able to use the media and, more importantly, the debate stages to put heat on the more moderate Republicans in the field and their positions.

Needless to say…the temperature has been raised and this thing is going to get interesting.

Senate Primary Field Could Expand By One Today

Senate Primary Field Could Expand By One Today

Sam Clovis

After several weeks of hinting he may join the U.S. Senate primary race, later today Sioux City based professor and radio host Sam Clovis will hold a press conference.

Though he was coy regarding the specifics, and refused to say it is even in regards to the Senate race, he told the Sioux City Journal, “I’ll be making an announcement that affects my future, and certainly my future on the radio, and it is a commitment for something down the road.”  Saying the announcement will affect his radio talk show job certainly suggests he is running—as once he has legally filed the FCC political broadcasting rules come into play and the station would be forced to give equal air-time to his opponents should they request it.  As a reaction to this most stations require a radio personality-turned-candidate to temporarily step down.

He also went on to tell the Sioux City Journal, “I’ve been a natural leader my whole life and I think those are, again, skills that are very lacking in Washington. Because we don’t have people who are willing to stand up and tell people the truth and then stick to their principles to make sure that happens. Everything seems to be about self-interest, nothing seems to be about the people of the country…I’ve been an executive; I’ve been in business, non-profit, for-profit, education, military service second to none, a very distinguished career there. So I have all of the credentials that one would need to be a person that one would look to lead and do the things that are necessary to lead this country, particularly if one pursued public office in the United States Senate.”

 

What This Means

While it’s standard to not give away the headline and tell the media what the press conference is specifically for, the language “a commitment for something down the road” strikes me as a little strange if this were going to be a straight announcement.  It would be unorthodox, but perhaps it will be a commitment to run if he sees the other candidates as not succeeding or not being sufficiently Conservative for him.  If he is not running I’m guessing he will at a minimum be seeking an audience with the currently declared candidates to talk issues.

Should he be announcing a decision to run in a few hours, we will have more information on his background (which is pretty extensive) and analysis on how the race would be impacted in the coming days.

Since he has already said publicly that he would be a “red-meat Conservative”—it’s pretty obvious where he’d want to move the discourse.

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