Bachmann Announcement in Waterloo 005 (5876897475)

A campaign announcement is the formal public launch of a

political campaign A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referend ...

, often delivered in a speech by the candidate at a political rally. Formal campaign announcements play an important role in

United States presidential elections The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dire ...

, particularly in shaping the start of a campaign season. They became more significant with the introduction of

presidential primaries The presidential primary elections and caucuses held in the various states, the District of Columbia, and territories of the United States form part of the nominating process of candidates for United States presidential elections. The United S ...

(as opposed to state caucuses) in the early 20th century. The expression to " throw one's hat in the ring", describing a challenger in boxing, was popularized by the Theodore Roosevelt 1912 presidential campaign. There has been a trend of announcements coming earlier, and even being preceded by an invisible primary phase and often as a first public step by an

exploratory committee In the election politics of the United States, an exploratory committee is an organization established to help determine whether a potential candidate should run for an elected office. They are most often cited in reference to candidates for pre ...

. A pledge to not run, the opposite of a campaign announcement, is known as a

Shermanesque statement Shermanesque statement, also called Sherman statement, Sherman speech, or the full Sherman, is American political jargon for a clear and direct statement by a potential candidate indicating that they will not run for a particular elected position ...

Factors

The timing of announcements has to balance aspects of

first-mover advantage In marketing strategy, first-mover advantage (FMA) is the competitive advantage gained by the initial ("first-moving") significant occupant of a market segment. First-mover advantage enables a company or firm to establish strong brand recognition ...

name recognition In politics, name recognition is the ability a voter has to identify a candidate's name due to a certain amount of previous exposure through various campaigning methods. It can be described as the awareness voters have about specific candidates r ...

, political momentum, and campaign fundraising for early or late entrants.

Frontrunners International Front Runners (Frontrunners) is an umbrella organization of LGBT running and walking clubs around the world. The walking clubs are called Frontwalkers. Activities Most Front Runners clubs host one or more weekly fun runs. Followin ...

generally have more reason to delay announcing. Financial rules from the

Federal Elections Commission The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency of the United States whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Created in 1974 through amendments to the Federal Election Camp ...

also disincentivize candidates from clearly stating their intentions early. Notable late outsider efforts include the

Robert F. Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign The Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign began on March 16, 1968, when Robert Francis Kennedy, a United States Senator from New York, mounted an unlikely challenge to incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. Followin ...

and the

Jesse Jackson 1984 presidential campaign In 1984, Jesse Jackson became the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to mount a nationwide campaign for President of the United States, running as a Democrat. In the primaries, Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a f ...

. Presidential announcements took new social media political forms in the 2012 and 2016 campaigns. The ambiguity of waiting for formal announcements for US elections in general has been criticized. The

Ross Perot 1992 presidential campaign In 1992, Ross Perot ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for President of the United States. Perot was a Texas industrialist who had never served as a public official, but he had experience as the head of several successful corporati ...

had been de facto active as an independent campaign with a conditional announcement statement on ''

Larry King Live ''Larry King Live'' was an American television talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was the channel's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly. Mainly aired from CNN's Los Angeles s ...

'' (a

talk show A talk show (or chat show in British English) is a television programming or radio programming genre structured around the act of spontaneous conversation.Bernard M. Timberg, Robert J. Erler'' (2010Television Talk: A History of the TV Talk Show ...

first), before the candidate withdrew, and then re-entered and formally announced only a month before the election. Sometimes an announcement will be delayed until considerably after the primary campaign has been underway. Examples include the

Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign The 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton was announced in a YouTube video, on April 12, 2015. Hillary Clinton was the 67th United States Secretary of State and served during the first term of the Obama administration, 2009 to 2013. ...

and the

Pete Buttigieg 2020 presidential campaign The 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg was an election campaign by the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. It was formally announced on April 14, 2019 in South Bend. Buttigieg was the first openly gay candidate to seek the Democr ...

. In 2020, Congressman

Justin Amash Justin Amash ( ; born April 18, 1980) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for from 2011 to 2021. Originally a Republican, Amash joined the Libertarian Party in April 2020, becoming the party's first (and, ...

formed an exploratory committee but decided not to run as an

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

. The John Delaney 2020 presidential campaign announcement on July 28, 2017, is thought to be the earliest by a serious candidate for at least 45 years.

References

{{reflist Election campaigning Speeches by type campaign announcement