Former Virginia
governor enters presidential race on the right

Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore is running for president, taking on the much better-known and richly financed Rudy Giuliani and John McCain for the Republican nomination, even though polls show that few voters outside Virginia have ever heard of him. Ask Gilmore whether he is serious about the presidency or just plowing ground for a statewide comeback and you get an impatient stare, then a lecture about a Republican Party hungry for his brand of tax-cutting conservatism, and finally a reminder: It's not the first time in his improbable career that the establishment has underestimated this overachieving son of a butcher.

''The race is about the presidency,'' Gilmore said in a flat, deliberate tone that underscored each word. ''The people I'm speaking to know me very well. They've watched my history, my career. They've known it for many, many years, and let's talk about that.''

In just over four years in the mid-1990s, Gilmore leapfrogged from being an elected local prosecutor in the conservative Richmond suburbs (where his father had been a supermarket meat cutter) to state attorney general, then to governor. He won overwhelmingly in the governor's race in 1997 on his vow to kill a hated property tax on personal cars.

At each step, he said in an Associated Press interview last week, his unwavering anti-abortion, pro-gun, antitax resolve won him new legions of fans--conservatives who vote in Republican primaries. His following flourished nationally, he said, as he chaired the Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association, and a respected national panel on terrorism.

Then came the pitch he delivers over and over to all who will listen: that he is the only faithful conservative in a Republican field led by wafflers, infidels, and even liberals.

Gilmore on McCain: ''He hasn't made his reputation as a conservative. He made his reputation as a maverick.''

On Giuliani: ''He's for gun control, he's for gay marriage, he's pro-choice.''

On former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: ''He's been a very liberal Northeast Republican.''

''The moment is there for a candidacy such as mine--a mainstream Reagan conservative,'' Gilmore said.

A year ago, there was plenty of buzz nationally about Virginia presidential prospects. Gilmore was not among them.

Former Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, unexpectedly abandoned his exploratory campaign in October, citing family concerns. A month later, Republican Sen. George Allen fumbled away a re-election that once seemed certain--and his nascent presidential campaign with it--in a loss to Reagan Republican-turned-Democrat Jim Webb, who had never run for office.

With the Republican Party in disarray after losing control of Congress for the first time in 12 years, Gilmore emerged in December from five obscure years out of politics with news he would run for president, an announcement that flabbergasted as many Virginia Republicans as Democrats.

''It's pretty far-fetched, but when you look at how many different factions of presidential candidates are out there, I guess he's as good as anyone,'' said Mike Woods, a Virginia lobbyist and Republican adviser.

Many in the conservative wing of Virginia's feuding Republican Party revere Gilmore, 57, as a hero who promised tax cuts and delivered them. ''He ran on a campaign to cut taxes, and he kept his word despite all kinds of harassment,'' said Paul Jost, a close Gilmore ally and financial supporter and an ardent antitax crusader.

To some Republican moderates like state senator Kenneth Stolle, Gilmore is a rigid and unforgiving ideologue who, by needlessly warring with senate Republicans, gave Democrats a crucial foothold in the state elections of 2001, just one year after Republicans had captured every statewide elected office or institution of government.

None of that bothers M. Boyd Marcus, Gilmore's longtime confidant and a consultant to his presidential race. Marcus said ''moderate and liberal Republicans'' will divide their support among Giuliani, McCain, and Romney. They're not Gilmore's audience.

Gilmore's audience, Marcus said, is the party's resolute right wing, and it is why he spends so much of his time traveling to address gatherings of socially conservative and anti-tax groups. He is betting that if he can raise ''seed money'' to sustain his campaign most of this year, he has a chance.

The last little-known, out-of-office governor to find success in a White House quest was Jimmy Carter, said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. That was 31 years ago, before the age of 24-hour cable news and the Internet, when a candidate on shoestring financing could spend years building support in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other pivotal states unnoticed by his rivals. (Bob Lewis, AP)