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Cain would consider VP bid

The World-Herald

Herman Cain would consider being a vice presidential candidate for "the right person," he told The World-Herald, but he didn't say who that might be.

"I'm in it to win it," Cain said in a telephone interview while campaigning in Virginia. "I'm not running for second place. (But) if we have the right nominee and it's not me, I'd consider it. ... But I am going to be the nominee, and I am going to beat Barack Obama."

Cain last week did single out one GOP candidate with whom he "would not be comfortable" running: Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Cain registered as an independent when he arrived in Omaha in 1986 because, he says, he didn't know the local candidates.

In 1996, he was on a campaign trip with Jack Kemp, who was running for vice president with Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, when he walked through pro- and anti-Kemp crowds exchanging comments in Harlem.

"Black Republicans?" yelled a black man in the anti-Kemp crowd. "There's no such thing as black Republicans."

When he got back to Omaha, Cain said, "That guy's shouting haunted me."

A few days later, he changed his registration to Republican. He remembers thinking, "Nobody is going to tell me how I'm supposed to think. It was a protest registration."

Cain said he doesn't agree with all Republican Party positions, "but, generally speaking, that's the party that represents my views."

— Steve Jordon


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