Jim Gilmore, the former Virginia governor who, unbeknownst to many, is running for president, said on Friday that if he gets a single vote in Monday night's Iowa caucuses, it will be a victory for his campaign.
"If I get one vote, frankly, in Iowa, I'll consider it a victory," Gilmore said on the Iowa radio show Mickelson in the Morning. "A single vote, I'll consider it a victory. Because I've told the press that I couldn't compete in Iowa because of the high expense of the process. So, you know, if all of a sudden, what amounts to a write-in vote basically, if people decide that they actually think I'm the right person to be the president, I'd be grateful for their support and I want your listeners to know that."
Gilmore, whose run for the Republican nomination has attracted little attention and support, reappeared at the undercard debate on Fox News on Thursday night, after failing to make the cut since the first debate on August 6. On Friday, other candidates, from his undercard rival Mike Huckabee to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, panned Gilmore, saying that they had forgotten he was still in the race.
"I thought that he had dropped out," Huckabee told radio host Simon Conway. "I was not aware that he was still in. I knew that he was early. I'm like you, when I saw his name, I said, 'Wait a minute, I thought that he had dropped out.' And of course he was called out for the fact that he has not spent one single moment in Iowa campaigning."
And on The Howie Carr Show, Trump piled on, saying "Nobody even knows who he is. And frankly, we thought he got out of the race and probably so did you. All of a sudden he showed up again."