Sen. Rob Portman barely registered on the national radar in five months as an outside potential presidential candidate.
The Ohio Republican recently acknowledged in a CNN interview that if he were to run for president, “I’d be an asterisk in the polls.”
That comment was remarkably prescient. In a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday, Portman’s nationwide base of support compared with other potential Republican candidates was so infinitesimal that it was actually denoted by an asterisk.
On Tuesday, by coincidence the same day the poll was released, Portman announced he would not move forward with a presidential bid.
“I don’t think I can run for president and be an effective senator at the same time,” he said.
One Portman aide noted that Portman has been candid from the beginning about the shape his presidential water-testing would take.
“He always said he was going to talk to his family after the election, and he did over the holiday and made up his mind to stay in the Senate now that there is an opportunity to actually get some things in his wheelhouse done,” the aide said, pointing to issues such as tax reform that could play a prominent role in the next Congress. “Rather than play games, he just wanted to get the news out.”
But few, if any, Republicans expected Portman would throw his hat in the ring, raising the question of how his brief flirtation benefited him and whether it shaped the nominating process at all.
“It never was a real bid,” said one Republican strategist with ties to Ohio. “His only shot to stay on the scene was to pop early and ‘graciously’ bow out.”
The most obvious benefit to Portman might be having raised his profile, and some money, for his own re-election in 2016. Ohio likely will be a key battleground for Democrats, and Portman is preparing to face a rigorous election cycle.
Some Republicans also speculate that the manner in which Portman bowed out from the presidential scrum, early and humbly, might have earned him respect — and chits for later on.
“It’s refreshing, it’s smart, but it also tees him up to run for vice president potentially,” said Hogan Gidley, who worked as Rick Santorum’s communications director during his 2012 presidential bid. “He’s looking at the greater good here and saying he could be a good spokesman for the party in Ohio.”
But observers don’t believe Portman’s moves helped position him to run for president in four or eight years.
Although he traveled during the past few months to Iowa and New Hampshire, both key presidential primary states, to campaign for Senate candidates, he only scratched the surface of the deep network he would need to build should he run for president in the future.
And the political memory span is short.
“No one’s going to remember this move in four years, much less eight,” Gidley said. “But if he puts his head down and helps bring home Ohio to secure the White House for Republicans, people would remember that, for sure.”
