Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels may have decided against a run for president, but his supporters are determined to make sure that his message continues to play a role in the race.
If Daniels entered the race for the White House, the ardent budget hawk would have made the threat America’s national debt poses to the country his defining issue. In order to keep that issue at the forefront of the national debate, Students for Daniels has renamed itself Students for Solvency, and plans to repurpose its infrastructure to lobby Congress and presidential candidates.
“This is the issue that speaks to our generation,” said Michael Knowles, a rising senior at Yale who founded the group with Max Eden, who graduated from Yale in May.
The original purpose of the group was to encourage a run by Daniels and to promote awareness of the governor and his issues. But when Daniels announced in May that he would not run, the group, Knowles said, “was left with the question of what to do.”
Before he made his decision, the governor “had some pretty wise words for us,” Knowles said. “This is about a cause and not a candidate,” Daniels told Knowles, adding, “you have to keep going if I choose not to.”
That is exactly what the group has decided to do. The organization already had an infrastructure of 68 chapters on campuses across the country, and had been getting a fair amount of media attention. Loathe to squander all that, they decided that rather than immediately endorse another candidate, as some members wanted, they would become an issues PAC focusing on the national debt.
“We don’t want to lose this momentum and influence that we have too soon,” said Knowles.
There doesn’t seem to be much danger of that. “Right after Mitch said he wasn’t going to run, Max and I had emails from the remaining campaigns asking for endorsements,” said Knowles.
Most recently, he said, they spoke with former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. They’ve also spoken to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Knowles said they were still talking to the various campaigns, and that they were “keeping a very open mind.”
“We might endorse nobody, we might endorse somebody,” he said.
But, he said, they have been encouraged by how so many of the other candidates “have come out and said, ‘we’re sorry that Mitch is gone. We want to pick up the mantle where he left off.’”
Knowles said an endorsement would happen “if one of those candidates is willing to make that issue one of their priorities and give our generation a say in the campaign.”
Though they haven’t decided on who they would endorse, there are some candidates they are fairly certain they would not endorse: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Palin resigning as governor before her term had ended removed her from serious consideration. Gingrich’s poor fiscal record did the same for him, Knowles said.
“I don’t think there’s going to be another Mitch Daniels that comes to us,” Knowles said. But, he added, “we live in reality. We need a real candidate to push this issue.”
In the mean time, Knowles said, they’re going to spend part of the summer lobbying in Washington, and “continue to put pressure on candidates and Congress.”
The group is “fighting for… an honest, serious discussion” on the subject of the national debt and the deficit.
“We’ve been shocked, frankly, at how this administration has handled the budget debate,” and the subject of the debt, said Knowles.
Students for Solvency is “not an intentionally partisan group,” Knowles said, adding that Students for Daniels was not created as a partisan group either. “But … we cannot seriously deal with our national debt if we don’t honestly and openly talk about entitlement reform.”
“President Obama is unwilling to do that. The Democrats in Congress have been unwilling to do that,” he said.
There’s a “very good chance we could get involved in some races [on the congressional level] depending on how fundraising goes,” said Knowles. But he was adamant that the group would maintain its “grass roots” sensibility, saying that they didn’t want to be a group that ended up being effectively run by a campaign.
An AP story on the group’s name change reported that ultimately the group intended to rename itself the “Student Initiative to Draft Daniels for Vice President or Treasury Secretary.” Knowles said that comment had been a joke.
“But,” he said, “Mitch is our guy. And I certainly wouldn’t put it past anyone in our organization to be heavily lobbying” for such a thing.