Former Tennessee senator and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson spoke to a gathering of Hillsborough County lawyers Thursday night, and while the event was closed to the press, Thompson said in an interview afterward that he’s “ready to run” if he decides the time is right to do so, but not interested in a running mate slot.

He suggested he’ll decide before September, the timetable espoused by another conservative who’s hanging on the sidelines in the crowded GOP primary, Newt Gingrich.

Thompson talked to WFLA-TV’s Keith Cate.

Though he’s not a declared candidate and hasn’t formed an exploratory committee, Thompson still registers well in polls that include him as a possibility both in Florida and nationally. He’s been placing in third behind the two leaders, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, and ahead of the third leader among declared candidates, Mitt Romney.

Thompson, a lead actor who played a prosecutor in the television series “Law and Order,” has the Reagan/Schwarzenegger cachet of an actor in politics.

Unlike them, he was in politics and government before he entered acting. He became an actor by playing himself in a film about a legal case he handled as a prosecutor in Tennessee, then served in the U.S. Senate.

He told Cate he’s “ready to run” personally, and that opening an exploratory campaign committee would be the logical first step.

He wouldn’t commit to any timetable, but suggested that he thinks voters need to know before fall what their choices in the race will be.

“I have no interesting running for or being vice president.” he said. “I don’t think I would ever want to do that.”

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