John Cox - the facts

Cox Told Tribune (on Dec 20) "It's a Lost Cause"

From Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune's end-of-year column "Catching up with early departures":

A local story that got considerably less attention this year was the quixotic bid for the presidency by Chicago businessman John Cox.

Cox began campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire in early 2006, visiting both states dozens of times and spending at least $1 million of his own money trying to become a contender in the crowded Republican primary field.

When I interviewed him for a column in August shortly after he finished 11th out of 11 candidates in an Iowa straw poll, Cox vowed to "stick it out" through the early caucuses and primaries.

But when I called him for an update Wednesday he said he'd closed his campaign offices late last month after having been excluded from yet another Republican debate."What's the point anymore?" he asked. "I always knew it was a long shot. But when the media made their decision not to include me, I figured it was a total lost cause."

Well, the fact is, Cox stopped paying for his New Hampshire office around October (and it had been vacant since March, 2007. It's now the Kucinich H.Q.) and his Iowa and South Carollina staffs had abandoned him already by early 2007.

So he ends his campaign on a lie. One more in a long train of lies his campaign was based upon.