Anyone can grow up to be president is how the old saying goes.

But does that “anyone” include a guy who has run – and lost – a number of times for lesser offices?

This brings us to Hirsh Singh.

Yes, this is the man from Atlantic County who most recently ran for governor and got beat soundly in the 2021 Republican primary. A year before that, he lost a primary fight for the U.S. Senate and the right to take on Cory Booker.

Now he says he’s running for president.

All this sounds like a joke, but it isn’t.

In fact, Arvind Kumar, campaign manager for Singh, told me Friday morning that the “joke” involving presidential candidates from New Jersey is Chris Christie. He noted that in 2016, Christie concentrated on the New Hampshire primary and finished sixth.

That’s true, but quite unlike Singh, Christie was twice elected governor of New Jersey.

Singh lost narrowly to Rik Mehta in the 2020 Senate primary, but that was a race totally under the radar. Everyone in New Jersey knew – Republicans included – that the GOP candidate, whoever he was, was not going to beat Booker.

A year later, Singh ran for governor. It was basically a three-man race between him, Phil Rizzo and Jack Ciattarelli.

I recall that Singh attended a rally in Schooleys Mountain, Morris County and said he was leading the race.

Not so.

Ciattarelli won with about 50 percent of the vote; Rizzo was second and Singh was third.

In his video announcement for president, Singh took credit for energizing the conservative wing of the New Jersey Republican Party.

Hard to know what that means. Republicans, notwithstanding their ideology, have not won any statewide elections of late – or since Christie in 2013.

In announcing his plans, Singh calls himself a MAGA-candidate and says Donald Trump is the greatest president in his lifetime. Singh is 38.

But he also says it’s time for new ideas.

Singh has traditional conservative positions on abortion and guns – pro-life and pro-Second Amendment respectively.

He also agrees with many other conservatives today that public schools have been taken over by sinister forces bent on indoctrinating children.

Labels often thrown around are that the schools are now controlled by Socialists, Marxists or Communists.

Singh had a term of his own, claiming that the Bolsheviks are running public education these days and imposing “their religion.”  That may come as a surprise to those who know that the Bolsheviks were atheists.

The candidate also railed against “big tech” and the pharmaceutical industry.

Singh is proudly unvaccinated against COVID.

So proud that he claims to be the only presidential candidate who hasn’t taken the COVID vaccine.

That makes him a “pure blood” candidate, or so Singh says in his video.