SAN DIEGO, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Veteran U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., has announced his intention to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.
Now serving his ninth term, the 58-year-old made the announcement Monday in San Diego, saying he will resign from Congress to campaign, the San Diego Tribune reported Tuesday.
Some observers said they doubted Hunter, relatively unknown outside California, could compete with the likes of other potential candidates such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
"The last time a sitting member of the House was elected president was James Garfield in 1880, and he got shot for his trouble," Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, the state where the first nomination contest will be voted in January 2008, told the Tribune.
