The Thaddeus McCotter presidential campaign of 2012 began when he filed papers on July 1, 2011, to run for the Republican Party's 2012 nomination for President of the United States. He officially announced his candidacy the next day at a rock festival near Detroit. McCotter, who had been a congressman from Michigan since 2003, was first mentioned as a potential presidential candidate on an April 2011 episode of the Fox News show Red Eye. During the campaign, he focused on reform of government and Wall Street. Commentators noted that McCotter's lack of name recognition hindered his chances for nomination. When included in Republican presidential preference polls, he regularly received less than one percent support. Following a last place finish in the Ames Straw Poll and the lack of any invitation to presidential debates, he dropped his candidacy on September 22, 2011, and endorsed Mitt Romney. He resigned from Congress in July 2012 amid a fraud investigation surrounding his congressional re-election campaign. (Full article...)