With Donald Trump looking as if he’ll be the Republican nominee for president, a group of Republican donors asked a Florida-based GOP firm to look for a possible candidate who could make an independent push to unseat both Trump and the eventual Democratic nominee.
Data Targeting, the firm hired to research a potential independent solution, has come back with one name and one name only: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“The reality of the the matter is that we will have President Trump or President [Hillary] Clinton—if we don’t have President Rice,” read a memo written by Joel Searby, a consultant with Data Targeting, Capital New York reports. The memo outlines Rice’s strengths with viable numbers if she enters a three-way race with Trump and Clinton.
The data firm also believes that Rice, who is black, could get 10-25 percent support from black and Hispanic voters. The memo even notes that if the end game is to stop Clinton and keep the Republican Party intact, Rice is the best option.
If Rice agrees to run, she “would need to gather over 79,900 valid petition signatures in Texas by May 9 and over 89,000 in North Carolina by June 9,” the memo notes.
“This has grown more urgent and more important, we believe, as the prospect of a brokered convention is floated,” the memo reads. “It is this group’s belief that a brokered convention is a recipe for Hillary Clinton’s election and the death of the Republican Party.”
Read more at Capital New York.