Wichita GOP club holds straw poll for 2024 presidential race. Where did Pompeo finish?

Days after former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would run for president in 2024 “no matter who all decides to get in,” a crowd of his most die-hard supporters signaled he is not the early hometown favorite.

Pompeo finished third Friday afternoon in an informal poll of preferred 2024 presidential candidates conducted by the Wichita Pachyderm Club, a Republican group that has backed Pompeo for years and hosted him as a speaker multiple times.

The four-term U.S. congressman from Wichita and former CIA director has not officially announced his candidacy but has been teasing a run for two years.

He finished the Wichita poll behind President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Trump was the favorite with 117 points, and DeSantis trailed with 106. In a distant third, Pompeo received 43 points. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who defeated Trump in the 2016 Kansas primary, was the only other Republican with a double-digit points, at 14.

The Wichita Pachyderm Club polled its dues-paying members at its Friday luncheon. Members received a blank ballot and wrote in their top three selections. Points were awarded in a weighted-ballot, ranked-choice system where a first-place vote is worth 4 points, second-place 2 points and third-place 1 point.

Karl Peterjohn, former Sedgwick County commissioner and president of the Pachyderm Club, cautioned against placing too much value on the results this early in the election cycle.

“I wouldn’t read as much into Pompeo’s numbers because he’s not an announced candidate,” Peterjohn said. “If, in January, Pompeo comes out and says he’s running, I can see increase in support.”

In South Carolina earlier this week, Pompeo said, “We’re going to make our decision based on if we think this is the right place for us to serve. If I come to believe I ought to become president, that I have something to offer the American people, I will run no matter who all decides to get in and who else decides not to get in the race.”

A spokesman for Pompeo did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Peterjohn said the most interesting thing about the poll “was whose names weren’t there. There were no votes for Cheney and no votes for Pence.”

Liz Cheney, a member of the U.S. House from Wyoming, recently lost a Republican primary to a challenger backed by Trump but has not ruled out a run for president. She voted to impeach Trump in the days after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. She also serves in a leadership position on the Jan. 6 committee that’s investigating the attack.

Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is also exploring a 2024 presidential bid and has tried to distance himself from Trump since he was targeted by the Jan. 6 mob of insurrectionists, some of whom chanted “hang Mike Pence.” Trump and his supporters have shunned Pence since, as president of the Senate, he certified Biden’s 2020 victory.

Peterjohn said he plans to continue polling each month until a candidate is chosen by voters. “The idea is to give Kansas a bigger say in this whole process,” he said.

“Pompeo is making some of the moves like he might become a candidate, but I think you’re going to have people deciding whether to jump in or jump out, and if Donald Trump announces he’s jumping in, I think there’s a lot of names floating around at the moment that will jump out.”