Buddy Roemer (R)
Experience: Former Governor of Louisiana
Residence: Baton Rouge, LA
Family: Married, 3 children
Education: BS, MBA Harvard University
Official Website: www.buddyroemer.com
Buddy Roemer (born Oct. 4, 1943) formally announced his candidacy for president on July 21, 2011 at Dartmouth College. He sees the New Hampshire primary as key to his candidacy, so much so that he is renting an apartment in Manchester.
Roemer served four terms in Congress as a Democrat between 1981 and 1988 before being elected governor in 1987. He was still serving as governor when he switched parties and became a Republican in 1991. He has a long way to go in terms of gaining voter recognition and getting the kind of traction his campaign will need to proceed beyond Iowa and New Hampshire. A WMUR Granite State Poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center in early July showed Roemer with less than 1 percent of voter support. The same poll showed a high degree of unfavorability among likely primary voters. He has rented an apartment in Manchester to help him stay active and gain support here in New Hampshire, but the effort he's put into the state never paid off in poll ratings or votes in the primary.
His latest talk had him considering a third-party candidacy, and he has constantly beat the drum over what he calls the corruption of money in politics. He has capped individual donations to his campaign at $100. Roemer's efforts in New Hampshire earned him only 945 votes in the Jan. 10 primary, which didn't even register a percentage point of the total votes cast. Winner Mitt Romney received 97,532 votes.
Largely invisible after the New Hampshire primary, Roemer flirted with a third party run, but on May 31 announced an official end to his campaign.
"As I am no longer a candidate for president, I am free to pledge a good portion of the rest of my life to enacting campaign reform in the halls of Congress and the corridors of the White House. Instead of using my right to the floor of Congress to lobby for corporate clients, I will lobby for the American people who want reform," he said in a statement. "To be successful, this endeavor must cross party lines. In truth, the two major parties are addicted to special interests and corporate money. I have said it many times: they are joined at the billfold. The two parties have been graveyards of reform too often in the past. They don’t want reform. They only want victory and reelection."