Mary Stegmeir | DesmoinesRegister.com | Dec. 28, 2011
Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman Kent Sorenson tonight endorsed Ron Paul, one of her rivals in the Iowa caucus race.
“I believe we’re at a turning point in this campaign,” Sorenson said during his surprise announcement this evening at a Ron Paul rally in Des Moines. “… I thought it was my duty to come to his aid, just like he came to my aid during my Senate race, which was a very nasty race.”
The state senator from Indianola was greeted with a round of applause from the roughly 500 people gathered at the Iowa fairgrounds for the event.
Many rose to their feet and hoisted Paul campaign signs above their heads when Sorenson added: “We’re going to take Ron Paul all the way to the White House.”
Sorenson told The Register he had been thinking about supporting Paul for a couple of days, but that he didn’t make the decision to switch campaigns until this evening.
Sorenson said he drove to Paul’s 7 p.m. event, called a Paul staffer and asked: “Do you guys want me on board?”
“(The staffer) walked out to the parking lot and then I walked in with him,” Sorenson said.
Sorenson declined to talk about the Bachmann campaign, instead saying he was basing his decision on the strength of Paul’s efforts in Iowa.
“The fact of the matter is that I believe we have a clear, top-tier race between Romney and Ron Paul,” said Sorenson, who also noted he believed the “Republican establishment” was unfairly biased against the congressman’s bid for office.
“We have a choice where we can elect more of the same like what we’re having in Romney, or we can elect someone who’s going to transform this country to get it back to what our founding fathers wanted, and I believe that’s Ron Paul,” he said.
The turnabout is a major surprise with just six days remaining before Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. Sorenson, in fact, appeared at a Bachmann event just this afternoon — a stop at the Pizza Ranch in his hometown of Indianola.
Sorenson said little at the event, but appeared with Bachmann and clearly offered indications of support for her candidacy.
Fellow Bachmann campaign co-chairman Brad Zaun told reporters Sorenson had just returned from the dentist, and Sorenson himself said he was saying little because he was still numb and afraid he would drool on himself.
Sorenson has been with the Bachmann campaign for months, traveling by her side throughout Iowa and acting as a surrogate at campaign events and in the press.
He is serving his first term in the Iowa Senate and previously served one term in the state House. A Paul press release lauds him as a leader in the fight in defense of traditional family values, the sanctity of life, and a restoration of Second Amendment rights.
- The Register’s Jason Noble contributed to this report.