--- title: Bob Corker Says He's Not Running for President description: Republican Sen. Bob Corker said Monday that he's not running for president, ending a seven-month mostly imaginary campaign. canonical: https://time.com/3703245/bob-corker-president/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-10T17:43:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T04:18:12.532Z article:section: Politics og:title: Corker Pops the Sham-paign Bubble og:description: He ended his imaginary presidential campaign. og:url: https://time.com/3703245/bob-corker-president/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54ea92e48f2984aa/69877e740b72e3fead6dd99c/bob-corker.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Secretary Of State John Kerry Testifies Before Senate Foreign Relations Committee On Combating ISIL og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Corker Pops the Sham-paign Bubble twitter:description: He ended his imaginary presidential campaign. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54ea92e48f2984aa/69877e740b72e3fead6dd99c/bob-corker.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Corker Pops the Sham-paign Bubble by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Feb 10, 2015 5:43 PM UTC  Sen. Bob Corker delivers opening remarks during a hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 9, 2014 in Washington, DC. Sen. Bob Corker delivers opening remarks during a hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 9, 2014 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla—Getty Images by [Ryan Teague Beckwith](https://time.com/author/ryan-teague-beckwith/) ## Ryan Teague Beckwith Feb 10, 2015 5:43 PM UTC Sen. Bob Corker’s presidential campaign never really got off the ground, but then it’s not clear that it was supposed to. Last summer, the Tennessee Republican [let it be known](http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/13/bob-corker-rule-presidential-bid/14013157/) in certain circles that he was mulling a run for the White House, leading to a nice profile in the Beltway publication _National Journal_ ([“Is Bob Corker Running for President?”](http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/is-bob-corker-running-for-president-20140626)) and a [slightly more skeptical take](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/bob-corker-2016%5Fn%5F5676201.html) from the Associated Press, which gave away the game in the second paragraph: --- > “” --- Then, on Monday, Corker came clean, [telling a Nashville public radio station](http://nashvillepublicradio.org/post/bob-corker-rules-out-run-president) that he’d prefer to stay in the Senate after all. In all, his imaginary presidential campaign lasted seven months and 13 days and consisted of a handful of headlines. So what’s the point? A while back, I coined a term for this phenomenon: the sham-paign. It’s a mostly imaginary campaign designed to boost the supposed candidate’s public profile and lead to favorable news coverage for a short while, possibly stoking the flames for an actual run down the road. [A few key signs:](http://cdn.spundge.com/stories/6367/embedded/) The candidates are not household names, they drop lots of brazen hints about a potential run (real candidates play coy), they’re the only one talking about a run and they never file any paperwork or take any concrete steps, such as visiting Iowa or New Hampshire. It’s too soon to tell which of [the longshot candidates](http://time.com/3684425/long-shot-republican-president-2016/) flirting with a 2016 bid are running sham-paigns yet. But in the months to come, expect to see a few more come to a similar end as Corker. 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