Lindsey Graham is the fourth candidate to drop out of the Republican presidential primary, joining Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Scott Walker.
“Today, I am suspending my campaign for president,” Graham said in a video posted Monday. Wait a minute: suspend?
When Walker dropped out, he said “I am suspending my campaign immediately.”
Perry said, “I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States.”
“I’ve come here to announce that I am suspending my campaign for president of the United States,” Jindal said.
“Suspend” implies something temporary. Does that mean Graham, Jindal, Perry or Walker might jump back in?
No.
Legally, “suspending” a campaign means nothing to the Federal Election Commission. But eventually a candidate has to formally terminate his campaign with the FEC. Before that, it needs to finish paying staff salaries, wind down any leases and pay off debt.
“You can’t turn these things off, they’re not like a light switch,” Center for Competitive Politics President David Keating told the Washington Examiner. “You have people on the payroll, you have payroll taxes to deposit with the IRS and so on. … These things take a while to wind down.”
For all intents and purposes, the Graham campaign is over. Why not just say that instead of using “suspend”?
“My guess is they just do it because everyone says that at this point,” Keating said. “In some cases it has legal significance, but they’re pretty rare and not that common right now.”
For some, there may also be faint hope of an unexpected surge of support or other candidates flaming out. In that event, a “suspended” campaign could be revived to be competitive again. Still, such an event would be unprecedented.
In summary, candidates “suspend” their campaigns because they still need to tie up their loose ends. Like trains, campaigns are large operations that cannot just stop on a dime, they take some time to close down.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
