Morry Taylor 1996 presidential campaign

The 1996 presidential campaign of Morry Taylor was a minor but widely noticed bid for the Republican Party nomination in the 1996 United States presidential election. Taylor, a manufacturing executive and corporate turnaround specialist, campaigned as a businessman-outsider and self-financed candidate who argued that commercial experience mattered more than political experience.^[3][4] He never became a major factor in the race, but his campaign drew unusual media attention because of its colorful style, his blunt rhetoric, and the fascination of writers such as Michael Lewis.^[5][6]

Taylor suspended his candidacy on March 8, 1996, after spending more than $6 million and winning no delegates.^[2]

Taylor entered the race as an unusual presidential hopeful: unlike most of the 1996 Republican field, he was neither a veteran elected official nor a professional conservative commentator. He was best known as the president and chief executive officer of Titan Wheel International, a heavy-duty tire and wheel manufacturer, and as a hard-driving Midwestern industrialist nicknamed "the Grizz".^[3][5]

Lewis wrote in The New Republic that Taylor was the only "bona fide commercial success story" among the Republican candidates and reported that Taylor had attracted attention at Ross Perot's 1995 United We Stand America convention, where hundreds of attendees signed up to work on his campaign after hearing him speak.^[5] That episode helped create the idea that a self-funded businessman with populist instincts might find an audience in the Republican primaries.^[5]

Taylor presented himself as a plainspoken outsider who believed that American politics had become too dominated by lawyers, bureaucrats, and professional talkers. Coverage of the campaign often emphasized the contrast between his personal wealth and his effort to style himself as a candidate for workers and producers rather than for political elites.^[4][3]

His campaign message combined anti-Washington rhetoric, deficit reduction, hostility to legal and bureaucratic complexity, and an emphasis on jobs and manufacturing.^[3][4] At the January 1996 Republican candidates forum in Des Moines, Taylor argued that government should abandon race-based classifications on official forms and said the country needed more "doing" and less talk.^[7] In the same forum, he mocked congressional seniority and singled out 93-year-old Senator Strom Thurmond as an example of a system he regarded as absurd.^[7]

Taylor also tried to distinguish himself from fellow businessman Steve Forbes by attacking Forbes's flat-tax proposal as unfair to wage earners. In debate appearances, Taylor argued that Forbes's plan would let people like himself pay no tax on capital gains while factory workers continued paying tax on wages.^[8]

Although he never rose beyond the bottom tier of the Republican field, Taylor qualified for and appeared in a number of widely viewed candidate forums and debates. He participated in the January 13, 1996 Republican candidates forum in Des Moines, the final major Iowa event before the caucuses.^[7] He also appeared in the February 15, 1996 debate in New Hampshire, the last major debate before that state's primary.^[9] Earlier in the cycle, he was also scheduled for a January 5, 1996 South Carolina television debate carried by CNN.^[10]

Taylor's low poll standing was itself part of the campaign story. A November 1995 Washington Post report on the Republican race, drawing on Gallup polling, listed several lower-tier candidates and said that Taylor "finished with asterisks", indicating support too small to measure meaningfully in the published totals.^[11]

Despite those numbers, Taylor attracted disproportionate media attention because of his theatrics and willingness to spend heavily on attention-getting tactics. A 1999 New Yorker retrospective recalled that at the 1995 Iowa straw poll he arrived in an open Dodge Viper accompanied by women motorcyclists dressed in leather and rhinestones.^[12] This American Life later reported that, during the Iowa campaign, Taylor held rallies at which he gave away a total of $25,000 in cash lotteries in an effort to draw crowds and notice.^[6]

Taylor concentrated much of his effort on Iowa and New Hampshire, the two early contests that could make or break long-shot candidacies. The Los Angeles Times wrote in January 1996 that he had been spending his own money on advertising and trying to present himself as a working-man's candidate even as many voters barely knew who he was.^[4] Another Los Angeles Times article from New Hampshire similarly noted that, despite his television advertising, many voters still had no idea who he was.^[13]

Taylor never translated his visibility into meaningful early-state support. In Iowa, The Washington Post reported that he received less than 1 percent of the caucus vote.^[14] In New Hampshire, official Federal Election Commission returns show that he received 2,944 votes, or 1.41 percent, finishing well behind Pat Buchanan, Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander, and Steve Forbes.^[15]

Taylor suspended his campaign on March 8, 1996.^[2] The New York Times reported that he had spent more than $6 million of his own money and had received only about 1 percent of the vote in the primaries he contested.^[2] Even after his withdrawal, his name remained on some later primary ballots because filing deadlines had already passed; official FEC returns show small residual vote totals for him in later contests such as South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, and Washington.^[15]

After Taylor left the race, elements of his campaign rhetoric outlived his candidacy. In March 1996, Newsweek reported that Bob Dole was trying to show voters that he was "a doer, not a talker", describing the phrase as "a slogan lifted from former candidate Morry Taylor". During the general election, Dole continued to use the line as part of his campaign message, and wire-service coverage during the Republican National Convention period noted that campaign officials had used it liberally in shaping his public image.^[16][17][18]

Taylor won no delegates in the 1996 Republican primaries.^[2] His best-known early-state performances came in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he failed to break through beyond the bottom tier of candidates.^[14][15] Official FEC returns show that he received 2,944 votes (1.41%) in New Hampshire, 162 votes (0.23%) in South Dakota, 257 votes (0.44%) in Vermont, and 702 votes (0.55%) in Washington, among other ballot appearances.^[15]

Taylor's campaign had little direct effect on the outcome of the 1996 Republican nomination contest, but it lingered in political journalism because of the way it was covered. Michael Lewis made Taylor one of the central characters in his 1996 campaign reporting and later in Trail Fever. This American Life also devoted part of its 1996 episode Rich Guys to Lewis's notes and observations on Taylor's campaign, helping preserve it as a memorable side story from the 1996 Republican primaries. Taylor later chronicled the campaign in his book Kill All the Lawyers – And Other Ways to Fix the Government.^{[5][6][19][20]}

Retrospective commentary has sometimes drawn a comparison between Taylor's 1996 candidacy and later businessman-outsider campaigns, especially that of Donald Trump. In 2016, Bloomberg News called Taylor the "Trump of '96" and argued that his self-funded bid had offered an early glimpse of what could happen when a corporate chief executive mounted an establishment-defying Republican presidential campaign.^[21][22]

• 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries
• Bob Dole 1996 presidential campaign
• Pat Buchanan 1996 presidential campaign
• Morry Taylor