William Drummond II announced today that he will drop out of the race for Florida’s Second Congressional District. Drummond was running under the Reform Party banner, and announced his run early last year. His departure from campaigning creates a three way race between Republican Steve Southerland, Democrat Gwen Graham and Independent Luther Lee.
“I am leaving, because the stress of the campaign is taking a toll on my family,” said William Drummond “I also had to step away from my graphic design business, and wish to get back to it”.
As the campaign winds down, William Drummond is attempting to advance the party. A number of resources he collected will be given to the state and national parties. He will donate his Facebook page to Florida’s Reform Party affiliate, and several other items to the Reform Party’s National Communications Committee. All contributions left in his bank account will be given back to his donors.
William Drummond wants to thank a number of his supporters and volunteers.
“I had a group of supporters that I wish to thank,” Drummond added. “I want to start by thanking the Reform Party supporters that rallied around me. My biggest support came from the Lost Dogs, a group of former Blue Dog Democrats that joined the Reform Party, I look forward to working with them in the future. I want to thank Nick, even though he was on the campaign for only three weeks, he brought expertise and skill to the campaign. He will have a bright career ahead of him. I want to thank Donna for putting together my financial support. I want to thank David for supporting me, and rallying the troops when need be. Lastly, I want to thank my wife for standing by me”.
William Drummond II has not decided if he will run for office in the future.
For More Information Contact:
Nicholas Hensley – Campaign Manager
[email protected]
Thanks for the explanation.
Paulie, I agree. The Florida affiliate has ballot access, so the idea of the campaign was to shake as many hands as we could, and talk to as many people as we could. We knew we weren’t going to win, but we were using it as a vehicle to promote the party. In the Southeast, we are trying to recruit centrist Democrats that are leaving the party. This groups is unofficially known as “Blue Dogs”. Drummond was another former centrist Democrat (like me) that got frustrated by the progressive agenda, and left. He was a good choice for reaching out to them.
Jed, we were trying to raise money as quickly as we could to try to keep him in the race. When people saw how bad the campaign was failing, only a few die-hard, old guard Reformers stepped up to donate and most of the regular supporters decided it wasn’t worth donating. The last batch of donations from the last three weeks are being returned except for mine, because I volunteered my donations to help take care of a small loan.
Even though the Florida affiliate is an original Reform Party affiliate, it’s leadership and organizers are extremely new and this was a learning curve for them.
Seems a lot of people burn themselves out trying to run harder than they can sustain in alt party politics especially. Long haul and secondary goals are the key…that many shooting stars miss.
Ah, I see. That makes more sense. It just seemed like ya’ll were promoting him hard there for a couple months, and then boom it’s all over. That probably sounds disrespectful, not how I meant it. Just an observation.
He declared right after the last election. I think January of last year. His wife didn’t like it the long hours and the time away from home. Beyond that, the campaign manager before me had no idea what he was doing, and the campaign was failing. There was no point in continuing.
Well, that didn’t take long.