RSSGrand Junction candidate for president lands spot on Texas ballot
Holding a wrench painted in the colors of the American flag, John Davis of Grand Junction stands by the motor home he has been driving during his campaign tour. Davis has been traveling since January 2011, aiming to visit 2,000 of the nation’s 3,141 counties in 42 states as he campaigns for the presidency of the United States.
Every Republican on the presidential primary ballot in Texas has made a splash only to disappear from view as the long primary season has droned on.
Well, all but two.
To be sure, Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee, is on the ballot. He’s the candidate who has swamped nearly all the others, including Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Charles “Buddy” Roemer and Rick Santorum.
But then there is John Davis of Grand Junction.
Davis, a homebuilder and president of Blue Star Industries, last year set out on a mission to visit every county in the United States in a bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency.
He fell short of his goal of visiting all 3,141 counties in the country, but he still visited 2,400 of them. In the end, though, he opted for a focused approach instead of a scattershot attack.
Davis ponied up $5,000 to get on the May 29 Texas primary ballot and said he visited all 254 Texas counties, 60 of them twice.
“They were really good to us,” he said of his whistle stops across the Lone Star State. “They came out, they asked good questions, they’re concerned about our country. It was nice to go someplace where they would receive you and they would talk with you.”
Whether that will translate into votes is anyone’s guess, Davis said, but he conceded he’s now the closest thing to the conservative alternative to Romney.
Davis also conceded that his quixotic bid isn’t going to upend the former Massachusetts governor, but that doesn’t mean Romney is a sure thing, either.
“I’m behind Romney 100 percent (if he’s the nominee,) but there are no guarantees behind the guy. Everything is so chaotic.”
Davis returned to Grand Junction on May 2, where he said he expects to remain for the rest of the campaign season.
“We’re done with the trip,” he said, “but we’re not backing out.”
He still has his red-white-and-blue wrench he uses as a campaign prop to illustrate the need to fix the country, and he said he won’t take the campaign wrapper off his motor home until after the November election.
He’s asked for tickets to the GOP convention in Florida but has heard nothing from the national Republican brass.
“Maybe I need to take my bus down there and park it in front of the convention center,” Davis said, as a reminder that those who stood up for Republican issues far away from the klieg lights of national television also deserve some recognition.
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