Hunter for president?

31 October 2006 |permalink | email article

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), the controversial conservative chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, unexpectedly told a San Diego waterfront news conference yesterday that he will run for president in 2008.

With an aircraft carrier as backdrop the pugnacious Hunter, a hawk on military and border security issues, declared “it’s the right thing to do for the country.”

Instant pundits correctly assume that the Vietnam War veteran and recipient of a Bronze Star is forming an exploratory committee in the expectation that he will lose the powerful post if the Democrats capture the House after the Nov. 7 midterm election.

Launching a White House bid now allows Hunter to raise money and organize supporters in early Republican primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina where far better nationally known potential candidates like John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani will have a distinct edge.

To reprise his own phrase, “there’s going to be some rough and tumble” ahead for the would-be nominee in period involving allegations of corruption by several GOP House members.

Hunter starts as a flawed candidate given his close association with former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham. The San Diego Republican was sentenced to more than eight years in prison this year for accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.

Hunter reportedly has accepted $46,000 in campaign donations from the same contractors at the center of the Cunningham scandal, Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, and their associates.

The conservative San Diego Union-Tribune wrote in a stinging Dec. 8, 2005 editorial, “Legal looting,” “Cunningham’s bribe-taking was repulsive.” It followed the newspaper’s article, “Contractor a master of gaining political access.”

Detailed was how Cunningham and Hunter worked closely with two companies in San Diego County to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and other House allies got Congress to allocate $190 million for “automated data conversion” projects from 1993 to 2001.

The editorial pointed out that a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted that the Pentagon already had the tools for such work.

Hunter disagreed, telling the Union-Tribune in a phone interview there was support within the Pentagon for such projects, citing several official letters praising the technology and endorsing automated document conversion.

The editorial presciently concluded, “The status quo is revolting. If only it would inspire a voter revolt. A few more stories like this one about Cunningham, Hunter and the document conversion follies, and it just might.”

806