, after officially filing to run The primary contest began with a fairly wide field, as the Republicans lacked an incumbent president or vice president.
George W. Bush,
Governor of Texas and son of
George H. W. Bush, the most recent Republican president, took an early lead, with the support of much of the party establishment as well as a strong fund-raising effort. Former cabinet member
George Shultz played an important early role in securing Republican support for Bush. In April 1998, he invited Bush to discuss policy issues with experts including
Michael Boskin,
John Taylor, and
Condoleezza Rice. The group, which was "looking for a candidate for 2000 with good political instincts, someone they could work with," was impressed, and Shultz encouraged Bush to enter the race. Due in part to establishment backing, Bush dominated in early polling and fundraising figures. Despite stumbling in early primary debates, he easily won the
Iowa caucuses, defeating his nearest opponent,
Steve Forbes, by a margin of 41% to 31%. Considered a
dark horse, U.S. Senator
John McCain of
Arizona won 48% of the vote to Bush's 30% in the first-in-the-nation
New Hampshire primary, giving
his campaign a boost of energy and donations.
Durham, New Hampshire was the site of an early debate between the Republican candidates. Then, the main primary season came down to a race between Bush and McCain. McCain's campaign, centered on
campaign finance reform, drew positive press coverage and a fair amount of public excitement, with polls giving the senator superior crossover support from independents and Democrats. With Vice President Gore easily locking up the Democratic nomination, many moderate and center-left voters felt compelled to make their voice heard in the still-contested Republican contest. Bush's campaign dealt with "
compassionate conservatism," including a greater role for the federal government in education, subsidies for private charitable programs, and large reductions in income and capital gains taxes. The next primary contest in
South Carolina was notorious for its negative tone. Although the Bush campaign said it was not behind any attacks on McCain, locals supporting Bush reportedly handed out fliers and made telephone calls to prospective voters suggesting among other things, unsubstantiated claims that McCain was a "
Manchurian candidate" and that he had fathered a child out of wedlock with a black New York-based prostitute (an incorrect reference to Bridget McCain, a child he and his wife had adopted from Bangladesh). Bush also drew fire for a speech made at
Bob Jones University, a school that still banned
interracial dating among its students. But the governor was seen to have the upper hand in a debate hosted by
Larry King Live, and he won in South Carolina by nine points. McCain won primaries in
Michigan, his home state of Arizona, and the remaining New England states except for Maine, but faced difficulty in appealing to conservative Republican primary voters. This was particularly true in Michigan, where despite winning the primary, McCain lost the GOP vote to Bush by a wide margin. McCain also competed in the Virginia primary, counting on continued crossover support by giving a speech calling out
Pat Robertson and
Jerry Falwell, both leaders of the
Christian right, for intolerance. Bush won Virginia easily in spite of this campaign tactic. Bush's subsequent
Super Tuesday victories in California,
New York and the South made it nearly impossible, mathematically, for McCain to catch up, and he suspended his campaign the next day. Other candidates included
social conservative activist
Gary Bauer, businessman
Steve Forbes,
Utah Senator
Orrin Hatch, former
ECOSOC Ambassador and
Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Alan Keyes, former
Tennessee Governor
Lamar Alexander, former
Red Cross director and cabinet member
Elizabeth Dole,
Ohio Congressman
John Kasich, and former Vice President
Dan Quayle. Bauer and Hatch campaigned on a traditional Republican platform of opposition to legalized abortion and reductions in
taxes. Keyes had a far more conservative platform, calling for the elimination of all federal taxes except
tariffs. Keyes also called for returning to ban homosexuals in the military, while most GOP candidates supported the "
don't ask, don't tell" policy. Keyes continued participating in the campaign for nearly all the primaries and continued to appear in the debates with frontrunners McCain and Bush. As in 1996, Forbes campaigned on making the federal income tax non-graduated, an idea he called the
flat tax, although he increased his focus on social conservatives in 2000. Although Forbes (who won a few states' primary contests in the
1996 primaries) came a close second to Bush in the
Iowa caucuses and even tied with him in the
Alaska caucuses, he nor any of these other candidates won a primary. ==Candidates==