Five Human Beings You’ve Never Heard of Who Ran For President This Century

A cautionary tale for those who may run.

Word leaked today that Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, will announce her candidacy for President next week. This makes Haley the second person to officially announce their candidacy for President, after the guy who was previously President and, theoretically anyway, would like to be again.

There are many other potential candidates who might announce their own campaign in the coming months, from Mike Pompeo to Tim Scott to Larry Hogan to, of course, ostensible Republican favorite Ron DeSantis to current President Joe Biden. Each of these eventual candidates, other than the top-tier candidates, is running less to become the actual next President of the United States and more to raise their personal and political profile — to become a larger part of the conversation that they currently are. This can work: Pete Buttigieg was a simple small-town mayor before the 2020 primary but is now the Secretary of Transportation and one of the rising stars in the Democratic Party. It worked even better for a real estate magnate from New York four years earlier.

But sometimes, sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes the campaign falls flat, and no one remembers you ever ran for President in the first place. Which is probably a good thing: Their campaigns are likely something they’d like to forget.

Here are five people who ran for President and got absolutely nothing out of it but debt.

Gary Bauer. Party: Republican. Year: 2000. Previous Job: President of the Family Research Council Campaign High Watermark: Fourth Place, 8.53 percent, Iowa caucuses. Memorable Campaign Moment: The time he tried to flip pancakes in New Hampshire and fell off the stage.

Where Is He Now? After serving on Trump’s United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Bauer is now president of something called American Values, which mostly looks like Bauer’s personal blog, with a fancy name. He’s a blogger now.

Dennis Kucinich. Party: Democrat. Year: 2004. Previous Job: Congressman from Ohio. Campaign High Watermark: 31 percent, second place, Hawaii caucuses. Memorable Campaign Moment: The time The New York Times said he had gone bananas. Where Is He Now? He ran for mayor of Cleveland — a job he had held 44 years earlier — in 2021 but finished in third place. He occasionally pops up to talk to Tucker Carlson.

Duncan Hunter. Party: Republican. Year: 2008. Previous Job: Congressman from California. Campaign High Watermark: 8.3 percent, third place, Wyoming caucuses. Memorable Campaign Moment: The time he accused a questioner in a town hall meeting of being a Hillary Clinton plant there specifically to derail his campaign. Where Is He Now? Retired. His son ran for his old House seat, won it, then had to resign because he was using campaign funds to pay for his mistresses. Trump would end up pardoning him. (And his wife.)

Michele Bachman. Party: Republican. Year: 2012. Previous Job: Congressman from Minnesota. Campaign High Watermark: 5percent, sixth place, Iowa caucuses. Memorable Campaign Moment: The time Newsweek called her “The Queen of Rage.” (There would end up being many candidates for this title.

Where Is She Now? She’s the dean at Regent University, once known as Christian Broadcasting Network University. She’s also trying to get rid of “transgender Black marxists.”

Michael Bloomberg. Party: Democrat, then Republican, then Democrat again. Year: 2020. Previous Job: Honestly, I’ve never heard of this person and don’t know what he did before he ran for President. Campaign High Watermark: First place, American Samoa! Memorable Campaign Moment: The time Elizabeth Warren set him on fire on stage.

Where is he now? Whoever he was, after Warren’s evisceration, he was never heard from again.

So, good luck, Nikki, and the rest of you! Someday, now that you have run for President, you can have a blog.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.