Kerr: The White House campaign Trump hopes you'll forget

Donald Trump’s announcement of his 2024 candidacy wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone. What puzzled me were the headlines and references to what was described as his “third run” at the White House.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who remembers this is not Trump’s third campaign for the White House, but his fourth. His very first run was back in 2000, when he tried to capture the nomination of the Reform Party.If you don’t recall the Reform Party, it’s probably because like so many other entities — the United States Football League, Atlantic City, Rudy Giuliani’s reputation — it basically imploded once it entered into Trump’s orbit.

But first, in the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, I think the entire Democratic Party should express its appreciation to the former president for the terrific month he has gifted them so far. First Trump rescued them from what should have been a crushing midterm humiliation by pushing a basket of opposing Fruit Loop candidates in political races all across the country. Then he announced his latest (and fourth) Oval Office bid.

This latest campaign is a bona fide gift to Democrats, tied up in a bow of red, white and blue. Make no mistake — they want Trump to run in 2024. And they really, really hope he’s the next Republican nominee, because at this point he’s likely the only top GOP contender who can’t beat Joe Biden.

Ironically, he also appears to be the only Republican at the moment who could possibly derail a Ron DeSantis candidacy, which is what terrifies Dems the most. Or should, anyway.

Personally, I’m thrilled to see Trump running again, as his return will give the GOP its next big chance to finally break free of its tyrant. If Republicans are dumb enough to yet again choose the former TV game show host as their standard bearer, they frankly deserve whatever disaster befalls them in 2024.

As reflected in the current makeup of both houses in Congress, America is literally a 50-50 country, but as longtime Trump critic George Conway recently noted, people disgusted with his past vile behavior “would crawl on broken glass to vote against him” now

But back to 2000.

For those who may not remember, the Reform Party was sparked by former presidential contender and billionaire Ross Perot, who had captured a lot of attention and millions of votes as a third-party candidate in the 1990s. As the 2000 election year approached, Perot sought to have conservative pundit Pat Buchanan carry the torch for the party he founded.

Others in the party wanted an alternative to Buchanan, and Trump — who even then had publicly toyed for many years with the idea of running for president – sought to offer himself as that candidate. His biggest backer was Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the former pro wrestler who had shocked the country by winning the Minnesota governorship on the Reform ticket and was its highest-ranking elected official.

On Sept. 30, 1999, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Trump entitled “America Needs A President Like Me,” in which he acknowledged he was considering a run at the Reform nomination. He then proceeded to embark on a talk show tour to discuss his candidacy.

It’s pretty startling to see how normal Trump looked and behaved as recently as 2000, prior to the curious tangerine-tinted transformation which led to the cartoonish figure we know so well today. But he was different in a lot of other ways as well.

During an October 1999 interview with TV newsman Dan Russert, Trump declared, “I am very pro-choice.” That same month he told Larry King he believed in universal health care, saying “it's an entitlement to this country if we're going to have a great country.”

In other interviews he described Buchanan as racist and a bigot, and claimed that Buchanan’s nomination would be a disaster. Which is kind of funny because Buchanan had become a political force in the 1990s by railing against establishment politics and globalism, proposing a fence along the southern U.S. border to stem immigration, and vowing to “make America first again.”

Sound familiar?

Of course, a lot of folks assumed this was all a publicity stunt by Trump to gain attention. When his book “The America We Deserve” was published in January 2000, Booklist noted “Trump may be the only man ever to run for president in order to promote a book.”

Trump actually won the Reform Party’s California primary that year, with 37% of the vote in a crowded field. Of course, that only translated to a little more than 15,000 votes.

By comparison, Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne earned nearly 21,000 votes to win his party’s primary, while Green Party winner Ralph Nader received more than 112,000 ballots. Former Vice President Al Gore won the Democratic primary in California with more than 2.6 million votes.

Trump also won the Michigan Reform Party primary with a whopping 2,100 votes. He tried to get on the New York ballot that year as well, but a state judge removed his name after he failed to get the required 5,000 signatures.But by the time the primaries were held, Trump had already dropped out. In another op-ed, this one in the February 19, 2000, edition of the New York Times, he cited the “fratricide” within the imploding Reform Party as one of the things that “happened to destroy any viable chance that I may have had to run an insurgent candidacy in the fall.““I had enormous fun thinking about a presidential candidacy and count it as one of my great life experiences,” he wrote, adding, “I cannot rule out another bid for the presidency in 2004.”

Buchanan wound up winning the Reform nomination but was a non-factor in the 2000 general election. Even Perot, his onetime champion, wound up supporting George W Bush. Trump left the Reform Party to join the Democratic Party before ultimately returning to the Republican Party again.

But a Reform Party chairman later claimed the 2000 effort by Trump and his eternal sidekick Roger Stone was “a Republican dirty trick,” designed “to disgust people and drive them away from the Reform Party.”

“They were doing everything in their power to make a mess,” chairman Pat Choate declared.

Which is something folks in the GOP might want to keep in mind over the next two years.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kerr: The White House campaign Trump hopes you'll forget