Hours after a new poll found that 65 percent of Americans would support an independent candidate entering the presidential race, former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, the subject of such chatter, removed himself as a possible contender.
“I am not in that race and won’t be,” Coburn said in a statement to the Daily Caller.
Coburn, who cut his Senate term short in 2014 after being diagnosed with cancer, was among a handful of individuals whose names have been floated by anti-Trump Republicans looking to draft a third-party candidate before the general election kicks into full gear.
Others who have been discussed as potential third-party challengers include Nebraska’s freshman Sen. Ben Sasse, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and retired four-star Gen. James Mattis.
All three individuals, however, have repeatedly indicated they are not interested in running.
But according to veteran GOP strategist Rick Wilson, who’s been closely involved in the effort to draft a conservative, third-party alternative to Trump, “some of the people who’ve said ‘no’ haven’t said as hard a ‘no’ in private as they have in public.”
“We’re still talking to a number of people,” Wilson told the Washington Examiner in an interview Tuesday morning.
