Announcement On January 20, 2007, at a
rally in
Topeka, Kansas, Brownback officially announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in a speech referencing
The Wizard of Oz, stating, "My family and I are taking the first steps on the
yellow brick road to the
White House." During the speech, Brownback touted his conservative positions on issues, claiming he was a "full-scale
Ronald Reagan conservative". Shortly after the announcement, the
Democratic National Committee released a statement calling him "a stubborn ideologue who places his own political agenda over the needs of the American people". That same day, Brownback returned to
Washington, D.C. to participate in an anti-abortion rally coinciding with the 34th anniversary of the
Roe v. Wade ruling.
Early campaign events (January - April) in May 2007 At the start of his campaigning, Brownback focused extensively on the state of Iowa, with Romney being the only Republican candidate to visit the state more than Brownback between 2004 and January 2007. Many of his campaign stops in the state focused on socially conservative groups, winning him early endorsement from board members of groups such as Iowa Right to Life, Iowa Christian Alliance, and the
Iowa Family Policy Center. In late January, Brownback spoke before about 350 Republican Party members at a luncheon in
Columbia, South Carolina. Members of the Christian right were an important
voting bloc in the
state's Republican Party and Brownback was trying to win them over from both Romney, who he accused of having a questionable record on abortion, and former
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained
Southern Baptist preacher who had recently entered the race for the Republican nomination and had a large support from
evangelical Christian Republicans. Around the same time, Brownback added
gospel singer Michael W. Smith as a national co-chairman of his campaign. In late February, Brownback, along with McCain, Romney, and U.S. Representative
Duncan L. Hunter traveled to the
National Convention of Religious Broadcasters in
Orlando, Florida in order to appeal to evangelical voters, during which time
NPR reported that there was no obvious
front-runner within that
voting bloc. On March 3–4, many Republican candidates, Brownback included, attended the
Conservative Political Action Conference. By this time, there was still no clear front-runner among the more
right-wing portion of the party, and in the
conference's straw poll, Brownback placed third with 15 percent of the vote, behind Romney (21 percent) and Giuliani (17 percent) and ahead of former
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (14 percent) and McCain (12 percent). Brownback also attended the Iowa Prayer Breakfast in Des Moines on April 6. By the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2007, Brownback's campaign had raised $1.27 million, compared to the three leading Republican candidates (Giuliani, McCain, and Romney) who had all raised in excess of $12 million.
Initial debates and controversies (May - August) On May 3, Brownback was one of ten candidates who participated in the first Republican Party
presidential debate at the
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in
Simi Valley, California. In an article written after the debate for
Politico,
political consultant Mike Murphy claimed that Brownback was one of the stronger "second-tier" candidates in the debate, saying, "Among the other candidates, Sam Brownback had a particularly strong night. He talked with passion and elegance about the social issues that are the backbone of his candidacy." The incident drew national media coverage, and on May 31, Brownback wrote an
op-ed in
The New York Times further explaining his stance. Brownback participated in the second Republican presidential debate in Columbia, South Carolina on May 15 and the third debate at
Saint Anselm College in
New Hampshire on June 5. On June 8, Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo stated they would compete in the
Iowa Straw Poll and challenged Romney (the only top-tier candidate competing in the poll after Giuliani and McCain both declined) to a series of debates. On August 11, Brownback campaigned in
Ames, Iowa, where the straw poll was being conducted. Actor
Stephen Baldwin made a
guest appearance at the event in support of Brownback. However, Brownback ended up finishing third in the poll behind Romney and Huckabee. On June 18, an aide for the Brownback campaign was reprimanded for sending an email to several leaders of the Iowa Republican Party where he criticized
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and contended that the church did not share much in common with other Christian denominations. The email was apparently intended to draw support away from Romney (who was a member of the LDS Church), and Brownback later issued an apology to Romney, which he accepted. In late July, Brownback and Huckabee got into what the online magazine
Slate referred to as a "multiround spat" after a supporter of Huckabee in Iowa sent an email to several Evangelicals in Iowa urging them to consider supporting Huckabee over Brownback, using what the Brownback campaign considered
anti-Catholic sentiments. A representative for Brownback's campaign referred to the use of "slurs" in the email and accused Huckabee's campaign of promoting a
whisper campaign against Brownback. The person who sent the email apologized shortly thereafter, though he claimed that his statements were misconstrued as anti-Catholic, which was not his intent. Huckabee, meanwhile, stated he was glad to hear the apology and stressed that the email was sent by someone not affiliated with his campaign. However, the Brownback campaign criticized Huckabee for not taking a firm stance in denouncing the email, On August 5, during a presidential debate held in Iowa, Romney criticized Brownback for his campaign's use of
robocalls that attacked Romney's past stance on abortion, claiming, "I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been pro-life longer than I have." Ultimately, the topic of abortion was one of the primary issues at this debate, with Brownback claiming that abortion represents "a core issue for our party". Romney continued to be a major target for the Brownback campaign, with the Brownback campaign calling Romney's change in stance on abortion a "Mitt-amorphosis", and an August 22 opinion piece by journalist
Jose Antonio Vargas in
The Washington Post highlighted that part of Brownback's campaign blog was dedicated to covering the "Mitt Flop File".
Further campaigning and withdrawal (September - October) On September 4, Brownback attended a forum at the
University of New Hampshire's
Memorial Union Building in
Durham, New Hampshire that was organized by the university's
College Republicans group. The following night, he participated in another debate held on the university's campus, during which he stressed his opposition to same-sex marriage. According to writer
Andy Towle, the debate audience booed Brownback's response that he supports a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. However, political analyst
Ross Douthat, writing for
The Atlantic, applauded Brownback's response to a question regarding the future of
Iraq wherein he supported a
partition of Iraq, naming him the winner of that night's debate. In an opinion poll of registered Republicans conducted by CNN and the
Opinion Research Corporation between September 7 and 9, Brownback was not included in the final results, with the lowest polling candidate included being Tancredo at 1 percent. During a September 27 debate at
Morgan State University (a
historically black university) in
Maryland, Brownback commented on several absent Republican candidates who did not attend the debate, telling the audience, "I'm sorry. A lot of people on the Republican side say we can’t get votes from the African American community. Why don’t you pick one of the primary states, register voters… and then vote for one of the six of us." On October 9, Brownback attended the debate in
Dearborn, Michigan, and argued in favor of a
"flat" federal income tax. Despite his campaigning and debate participation, by October, Brownback was polling near the bottom of the list of Republican candidates. On October 11, the
Associated Press reported that Brownback was polling at 2 percent in the most recent poll by
The Des Moines Register, putting him in eighth place. The only candidates to poll lower were Hunter and
perennial candidate Alan Keyes, while front-runner Romney was polling at 29 percent. CBS News further reported that Brownback was trailing several candidates by millions of dollars in fundraising and that his campaigning in Iowa at this point had "stalled", despite campaign stops in
Dubuque and
Muscatine, Iowa. Between July and September, Brownback ranked seventh among Republican candidates in funding, raising a total of approximately $4 million overall. Additionally, the Associated Press-Ipsos poll for October gave Brownback a 1 percent approval nationwide, down from a peak of 3 percent in June. Despite this, in early October, Brownback stated his intention to stay in the race until January, vowing to drop out if he placed worse than 4th place in the
Iowa caucuses. However, on October 18, CBS News reported that Brownback was expected to end his campaign the following day, with the primary issue being a lack of funds. At the time, the campaign had approximately $94,000 on hand, far below other Republican candidates. Additionally, Brownback expressed a desire to return to Kansas and many anticipated that he was planning to run for
Governor of Kansas in 2010, after his second full Senate term expired. On October 19, speaking from the
Kansas State Capitol in Topeka, Brownback announced he was ending his campaign, stating, "Today I’m ending my candidacy. My yellow brick road just came short of the White House this time." == Endorsements ==