No,,,,and even Ronald Reagan didn’t declare until November in 1979. But the primary system has been so greatly accelerated by competition between the states to be earlier—that any further delay is just plain wasting the precious time left until February, by which time the process will likely have selected a nominee.
This idiotic race to move all the primaries up to New Years eve, and to frontload everything to pick the nominee based on a few states....it's ridiculous.
Anything Thompson can do to reverse this trend is a good thing.
Reagan had already run in '75-'76. The people were already familiar with him and his years as Governor. Fred is not in that position.