January 27, 2016 12:37 PM UTC

Hey, Look, Jim Gilmore is Still Here!

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

On Thursday FOX News will host the final Republican Presidential debate before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, and the big news — of course — is that frontrunner Donald Trump plans to skip the event in Des Moines.

But that’s not the only news that caught our attention. Per FOX News, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore somehow qualified for the “Junior Varsity” or “Kids’ Table” debate that will take place before tomorrow night’s main event:

To qualify for the prime-time debate, a candidate had to place in the top six in an average of recent national polls, or in the top five in an average of recent Iowa or New Hampshire polls. ‎The evening debate features other candidates who received a minimum 1 percent in at least one recent national poll.

We haven’t seen or heard much of anything about Gilmore since he magically appeared at the very first Republican Presidential debate undercard back in August. We find this a tad hard to believe, but apparently there is at least one national poll in which Gilmore captures at least 1% of the vote.

Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Carly Fiorina are scheduled to join Gilmore at the Junior Varsity table tomorrow evening. It’s probably not much of a confidence boost to find out that you have to debate against a guy that nobody even knew was still a candidate. It’s entirely possible that Gilmore himself didn’t know he was still running for President.