Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ended his campaign for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
On Jan. 21, in a four-and-a-half minute video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Florida governor announced he ended his bid for the presidency. The announcement came two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary.
“Following our second-place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome—more campaign stops, more interviews—I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory,” Mr. DeSantis said in his video message.
“Accordingly, I am now today suspending my campaign.”
In the same announcement, Mr. DeSantis endorsed former President Donald Trump, the GOP frontrunner.
“He has my endorsement because we cannot go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear,” Mr. DeSantis said. “A repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”
With Mr. DeSantis’ withdrawal, only former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stands in the way of President Trump reclaiming the GOP nomination. That would set up a rematch of the 2020 presidential election.
.@NikkiHaley on @RonDeSantis dropping: “It’s now one fella and one lady.” pic.twitter.com/4kXKXpXmMp
— Jackson Richman (@jacksonrichman) January 21, 2024
“He ran a great race, he’s been a good governor, and we wish him well,” Ms. Haley told a crowd of supporters at a campaign stop at Brown’s Lobster Pound in Seabrook, New Hampshire, upon hearing the news. “Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left.”
Her campaign released a statement shortly afterward, stating: “So far, only one state has voted. Half of its votes went to Donald Trump, and half did not. We’re not a country of coronations. Voters deserve a say in whether we go down the road of Trump and Biden again, or we go down a new conservative road.”
Just days before, in spite of losing to Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, Ms. Haley declared the competition for the GOP’s nomination a two-horse race.
Mr. DeSantis ended his candidacy with only two days left ahead of New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 presidential primary election. While Mr. DeSantis beat Ms. Haley in the Republican Party of Iowa’s Caucus by a margin of 21.2 percent of the vote to 19.1 percent, he finished far behind President Trump, who took 51 percent of the votes cast at the caucuses.
That loss came after a long and expensive campaign in Iowa. Mr. DeSantis followed the well-worn playbook of retail politicking in Iowa. He hit all of its 99 counties, invested heavily in advertising, promoting himself, and criticizing his opponents, and his campaign claimed to have more than 50,000 voters lined up to back him at the polls. On caucus day, less than half of that number came.
In New Hampshire polling, Mr. DeSantis was running well behind President Trump and Ms. Haley. Although he once ran close to President Trump there, by January, he had less than 10 percent of Granite Staters lined up to vote for him.
The DeSantis campaign got off to a promising start. He won a landslide reelection bid against former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in November 2022 after his star rose high in conservative circles for keeping the Sunshine State open while much of the country was shuttering during the initial outbreak of COVID-19.
In early polling ahead of his announcement, Mr. DeSantis was running near President Trump on the strength of his conservative reputation. However, as time wore on and the former president was hit with indictments President Trump ascended back to the top spot while Mr. DeSantis gradually fell out of favor.
The DeSantis campaign was also dogged by rumors of infighting and a lack of strategic organization. Its largest financial backer, Never Back Down Inc., saw its leadership change frequently toward the end of 2023 and lost its chief strategist, noted Republican consultant and founder of Axiom Strategies Jeff Roe. It also saw its largest donor defect to President Trump.
The Epoch Times previously reported that political science observers in Iowa saw that Mr. DeSantis’ message was not resonating with regular voters in the Hawkeye State.
Karen Kedrowski, professor of political science at Iowa State University, said in a January interview with The Epoch Times that DeSantis campaign made a huge miscalculation of not anticipating his message would fall flat with voters.
Ultimately, Mr. DeSantis did not demonstrate enough difference between himself and Trump, Ms. Kedrowski said. The campaign, dogged by sagging poll figures and constant reports of dysfunction, could not shake an image of protracted decline.
Near the end of the campaign, Mr. DeSantis became more combative with Ms. Haley. They held a fraught debate on Jan. 11 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Now, if President Trump is victorious in New Hampshire, it may well end the Republican Party’s primaries well before so-called Super Tuesday in early March.
“Nobody worked harder and we left it all out on the field,” Mr. DeSantis said in his X video. “While this campaign has ended, the mission continues. Down here in Florida, we will continue to show the country how to lead.”
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
