BOULDER, COLORADO—Reporting that he’d really hoped they could make it to this one, particularly since they missed his last two press conferences, fourteenth-place presidential candidate George Pataki appeared to be searching the audience at the Republican Party’s “undercard” debate for his mom and dad, who had both promised to come see him.

“I even told them I’d be on the left half of the stage,” the former New York Governor announced, his voice faltering as he surveyed the unsmiling crowd at the Coors Events Center.

“Wait, maybe they thought I meant their left?” continued Pataki, who has received 0 percent in each of the four most recent polls of Iowa Republicans, training his gaze on the other half of the audience.

After the debate’s conclusion, Pataki, having frantically sought out every cluster of audience members in the foyer, was reportedly asking Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA)’s mom for a ride home, saying that it was only a time zone out of her way.

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