Quotes About Re-election

#1. "Undecided," while running for re-election to state Senate in 1998, in response to an Outlines questionnaire asking, "Do you favor legalizing same-sex marriage?"

Barack Obama

#2. President Obama's re-election campaign said that this year they'll knock on 150 percent more doors than they did in 2008. Well, of course they will. They have to. There's so many foreclosures it's tough to tell where people live.

Jay Leno

#3. When you're in elected office, you always have to operate under the assumption that you're in a dog fight for re-election. It's when you don't prepare for a tough battle, when you're caught flat-footed, that you're vulnerable.

Kevin Yoder

#4. I have to earn re-election. That's the way I see it.

Yvette Clarke

#5. In my wildest dreams, I never would have thought we'd come to the point where were talking about the re-election of a black president.

Harvey Gantt

#6. In Washington, politicians worry about their 'base.' About polls. About ideology. About raising money. About re-election. They measure their future in two- or six-year increments.

Mike Barnicle

#7. In a year of re-election he was desperate to impress.

Rod Stewart

#8. I am convinced that international terrorism gave itself the goal of not allowing the re-election of Bush. The statement by bin Laden in the final stages of the pre-election campaign is the best confirmation of this.

Vladimir Putin

#9. In the aftermath of President Obama's re-election, members of both the administration and the media trumpeted that Obama had received his long-sought mandate. Obamacare, Americans were told, was the law of the land. It could not be changed; it could not be stopped.

Ben Shapiro

#10. Is there anything more dangerous to the cause of liberty than a politician fixated on re-election?

Neal Boortz

#11. I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.

Kevin Costner

#12. [J]ust from a political perspective, do you think the president of the United States going into re-election wants gas prices to go up higher? ... Look, here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices: I want gas prices lower because they hurt families.

Barack Obama

#13. It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning re-election to their golden thrones in heaven year after year.

Aravind Adiga

#14. Bush advisers have long been worried that a lagging economy could hamper the president's re-election chances. They hope that the Cabinet shake-up will provide a needed jolt. If that doesn't work, North Korea has to go.

Jon Stewart

#15. I am running for re-election no matter who runs.

Charles B. Rangel

#16. My task, as a member of this parliament and a 30-year member of the Australian Labor Party, as its former leader, as its former foreign minister and its former prime minister, is to now throw my every effort in securing Julia Gillard's re-election as Labor prime minister at the next election.

Kevin Rudd

#17. Basically, the start of my thinking process is: 'OK, if you didn't have to worry about re-election, what would you be doing?' That's kind of how I'm starting to think.

Ray Nagin

#18. I am honored to be here as co-chair of President Obama's re-election campaign.

Eva Longoria

#19. Having won re-election convincingly and against the economic odds, President Obama quickly made good on his promise of maintaining taxes as they are for the middle class while raising them on the wealthiest Americans.

Kevin O'Leary

#20. I've noticed that in the U.S., when the president hits the three-year mark in office, he goes into re-election campaigning.

Lee Myung-bak

#21. In 1996, President Clinton put together a detailed agenda called 'A Bridge to the 21st Century' that told voters why, in his words, 'rehire him' for another four years. That's the right way for an incumbent president to run for re-election.

Al From

#22. In my mind, the re-election of Richard Nixon, compared with what was available on the other side, was so much more important that I put it in just that context.

John N. Mitchell

#23. The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate.

Julia Gillard

#24. Because of racism, he can't govern effectively' is not a great argument for re-election.

James Taranto

#25. I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.

George Soros

#26. Politicians in Washington work in a small, sheltered world where they lurch from crisis to crisis that they create, nurture and use as ideological triggers in their selfish pursuit of re-election.

Mike Barnicle

#27. After a great deal of thought and discussions with my family, I have decided not to seek re-election in 2014. Politics shouldn't be a career, and I never intended to make it one.

Jon Runyan

#28. Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: "For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone." A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd.

Frankie Boyle

#29. Because you basically won a close re-election, your first task is to unify the city. And it's done not with words but with actions, by reaching out, to the supporters of your opponent as well as to reassure your own supporters.

Marc Morial

#30. Insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American Dream. That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy for President Obama, but is a demoralizing message for America.

Chris Christie

#31. The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.

Thomas Sowell

#32. There once was a man name Barack,
Whose re-election came as a shock.
He raised the taxes I pay,
And then turned marriage gay.
And now he's coming after your glock.

Stephen Colbert

#33. Joe Scarborough was one of 74 Republicans elected to the Congress in 1994 in response to the missteps of the early Clinton era. He was the first Republican elected to Congress from his northern Florida district since the 1870s and handily won re-election three times.

Christopher Buckley

#34. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says he will not seek re-election. Harry said he wants to spend more time with his family. As I always say, check with your family.

David Letterman

#35. Whether or not the President is sleeping well won't be a factor in his re-election. That will depend on what he does while he is awake.

Bob Schieffer

#36. During the campaign for re-election, Barack Obama at least made vague references to a willingness to accept $3 trillion of reduced spending in exchange for a $1 trillion dollar tax increase.

Bob Beauprez

#37. The election of the nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000 and his re-election in 2004 was a nadir in the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland.

Martin Jacques

#38. In January 2013, I told the people in the Justice Department after the re-election that I wanted to focus on reforming the federal criminal justice system. I made an announcement in August of that year in San Francisco, when we rolled out the Smart on Crime initiative.

Eric Holder

#39. This November, with the re-election of President Barack Obama, this generation of Americans will ever expand upon the hope, the truth and the promise of America.

Cory Booker

#40. The only true allegiance a politician has is to his own re-election.

Michelle Malkin

#41. There's a lot of work to be done if you're going to run for president or if you're going to run for re-election in a state as big as Florida.

Marco Rubio

#42. I'm up for re-election in 2014, and yes I do plan to run for re-election.

Kay Hagan

#43. California's 74-year-old Senator Barbara Boxer announced she will not run for re-election in 2016. When I saw the headline '74-Year-Old Boxer,' I assumed they were making another 'Rocky' movie.

Conan O'Brien

#44. The argument that John F. Kennedy was a closet peacenik, ready to give up on what the Vietnamese call the 'American War' upon re-election, received its most farcical treatment in Oliver Stone's 'JFK.'

Rick Perlstein

#45. President Obama announced his re-election campaign, though it's not really a surprise. He did all the things that make it official: He filed the paperwork, redesigned his website, and printed another fake birth certificate.

Craig Ferguson

#46. Can we pray for the re-election of George Bush?

Sean Hannity

#47. I can remember the morning after President Nixon won re-election in 1972. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, called a Cabinet meeting and told the members: 'You are all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes;' and asked for their resignations.

Helen Thomas

#48. I became a Republican in the summer of 1972. I was involved in running President Nixon's re-election campaign in California and became part of his administration at the start of his second term.

Ed Rollins

#49. The election, and even the re-election, of a black man as president, in a country that is 87 percent non-black - a first in human history - has had no impact on what are called 'racial tensions.'

Dennis Prager

#50. I love Nigerians becouse they're extra ordinary people they make impossible to be possible.

Hamzatribah

#51. I haven't left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are Viagra and Cialis.
Election, erection, election, erection!
Either way we're screwed!

Bette Midler

#52. Bill and Hillary Clinton have one central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get re-elected, use the '04 primaries and general election to clean out the underbrush of competing Democratic candidates, and proceed unimpeded to the '08 nomination.

Dick Morris

#53. This is our last chance to make a difference. If you're like me, you don't want to have to ask yourself on the day after the election, what else could I have done?

Brad Pitt

#54. Look at politics; they're always in competition over an election, who wants to win. It's just who we are, it's what we do.

Charles Tillman

#55. So to that extent that was a very sharp reminder a few months out from the election that we weren't performing in the eyes of the public to the level that they wanted if they were going to re-elect us. So we went out and were much more upfront on issues.

Jim Bolger

#56. If you're running to be president of the United States, you can't just tell people you're going to make America great again. I think you need to begin to explain exactly how you're going to do it policy-wise. We're not going to win a general election with a candidate that refuses to detail policy.

Marco Rubio

#57. The public is tired of politicians professing certain beliefs and not acting on those beliefs. They want elected officials who have the moral courage to do what they will say they will do when they're running for election.

Colonel Tom Parker

#58. The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals.

Rush Limbaugh

#59. What's important is that, come the general election, people think the right things of you. They think that you've got the right values and the right policies. And that you're the right kind of person to lead the country.

George Osborne

#60. Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine.

Dean Koontz

#61. The Liberal Party of Canada, heading into an election, at the last minute they always stand up and they say: We know there's people out there that want to vote NDP and God love you. But if you vote for them you're throwing your vote away.

Rick Mercer

#62. We're all in this together. That's how we campaigned, and that's who we are. This happened because of you. Thank you.

Barack Obama

#63. A new poll says that if the election were held today, both John Kerry and John Edwards would beat President Bush by double digit margins. The White House is so worried about this, they're now thinking of moving up the capture of Osama Bin Laden to next month.

Jay Leno

#64. I always stand out by the voting lines on Election Day, and I can't tell you how many people say, 'I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, but I'm splitting my ticket for you.' They're more engaged and thoughtful than we give them credit for.

Wendy Davis

#65. The Blue Dogs are all Democrats; they are. And I'll tell you, in terms of wearing the Democratic label, I think they're the true Democrats, because that label usually hurts them when they're running for election.

Jim Matheson

#66. If you're going to try to win an election, you can't be 80 percent. You can't say, I'm for what my Democratic opponent is, for but not quite so much of it.

Pete Du Pont

#67. Yesterday was Election Day. If we have any Democrats in the audience, I'm sorry but you're going to have to give up your seats.

David Letterman

#68. Republicans are relentless and they're smart, too - they're not all dumb - and on Election Day, they'll be up at five in the morning.

Michael Moore

#69. If you stand at an election and put a manifesto in front of people saying you're going to improve health care, you have to stick by that.

Bob Ainsworth

#70. The American people are sick and tired of this 'lesser evil' garbage they get fed every election year. Both the Democrats and the Republicans do the same evils once they're in office.

Roseanne Barr

#71. And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet - because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it.

Barack Obama

#72. In our system, at about 11:30 on election night, they just push you off the edge of the cliff-and that's it. You might scream on the way down, but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in elective office.

Walter F. Mondale

#73. Democracy is messy. It is messy whether you've been doing it since 1789 or whether you're going to do it for the first time in 2005. The trouble with Democracy is, you hold elections. The trouble with dictatorships is ... you don't.

Rich Galen

#74. We have a system that allows us to manage a free and fair election, free of fraud, free of intimidation, and that's what we delivered on election day, and we're very very proud of it.

Kenneth Blackwell

#75. In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

P. J. O'Rourke

#76. We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we're being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.

Gael Garcia Bernal

#77. Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.

Clint Eastwood

#78. You believe that you can win the nomination of your party, and then you believe that you're the strongest candidate to win the election for your party.

Rudy Giuliani

#79. Well, usually when you talk about a mandate, you're talking about an overwhelming win. I don't think by any measurement the 2004 election was an overwhelming win.

Lincoln Chafee

#80. Obama/Romney, Romney/Obama - the most important election of our lifetime? Fact is they're all the same - bought and paid for with the same money. Ours is a country of the SuperPAC, by the SuperPAC, and for the SuperPAC.

Bill Gross

#81. This won't stop her from getting elected," Shane said. "Stupider people get elected all the time. It's America. We love the sleazy. And the crazy." "I would like to think better of us," Claire said, "but yeah. You're right.

Rachel Caine

#82. When we finally have this recall election in October, there could be as many as 200 people on the ballot. And you know what's really scary? Most of them don't know the first thing about driving a state into bankruptcy. They're not experts like Governor Gray Davis.

Jay Leno

#83. Sometimes the media says, well, this state had an election, it's the end of the campaign. It is not. We have dozens of more states to go. We're feeling good about the future.

Bernie Sanders

#84. During an election, it's like they're doing my job: they're going around banging the drum for their party and selling their movie. You know, it's the same thing.

Emma Thompson

#85. I recognize that as the guy who lost the election, I'm not in a position to tell everybody else how to win, all right? They're not going to listen, and I don't have the credibility to do that anyway.

Mitt Romney

#86. I've often heard the complaint from both Democrat and Republican voters alike that they hate the fact that politicians get into office and they - and they're fearful, they're fearful to make tough decisions because they think more about the next election than they do about the next-generation.

Scott Walker

#87. I think the voters believe that when you become president of the United States, you have a higher obligation and a higher standard than anybody in the world, ... And if you violate that standard, they're going to remember it on election day.

Bob Dole

#88. We're not going to fix government until we fix citizenship.

Jennifer Pahlka

#89. Most major domestic programs got more money this year, and they're used to reflect the priorities of the upcoming year. One good example is, the Secret Service is getting $268 extra dollars because it's a presidential election year and the agency's going to be under more demands.

Susan Davis

#90. We're not going to scrap the budget and make up some totally new platform the day after the election. So it's certainly willingness to compromise but we're not going back on the fundamental things we're running on in this campaign.

Stephen Harper

#91. [If not re-elected in 1864] then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.

Abraham Lincoln

#92. Well, if Democratic members in the House elect Nancy Pelosi as their leader, it's almost as if they just didn't get the message from the voters this election. I mean, the voters outright rejected the agenda that she's been about. And here they're going to put her back in charge.

Eric Cantor

#93. We're like a Third World country when it comes to some of our election practices.

Donna Brazile

#94. Barack Obama said yesterday that the economy was 'going to get worse before it gets better.' See, that's when you know the campaign is really over. Remember before the election? 'The audacity of hope!' 'Yes, we can!' 'A change we can believe in!' Now it's, 'We're all screwed.'

Jay Leno

#95. The Olympics are coming ... and it's a big problem in American politics, because the problem with holding the Olympics this fall is that we're all going to be focused on the Olympics, and it makes that window of opportunity for Gore to win the election that much smaller.

Susan Estrich

#96. You sold out! We elected you, and you sold out! The next time we have an election, I think everyone should vote for himself. Or we might just as well vote for Charlie Brown! Yes, next year we may even say, 'You're elected, Charlie Brown!

Charles M. Schulz

#97. God help this country if we're now prepared to vote for someone we don't trust. But every election cycle we do things we never dreamed of.

Rudy Giuliani

#98. You can almost hear people saying, 'We're going to make a movie about an election' and 'We're going to make a movie about a lobbyist.' You can hear the yawning start across the nation.

Kevin Spacey

#99. President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you're a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn't work too badly, I'll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election.

Timothy Noah

#100. I think the Liberals are doing everything they can to do turn it around, but the reality is that we're at the point right now where only Stephen Harper can lose this election. Only some major mistake by Harper or someone close to him can derail the Conservative juggernaut.

Nik Nanos