Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Sunday, ending a bid that began as the best-funded and highest-profile challenge to former President Trump but fizzled over the course of a year.
He endorsed Trump, saying in a video posted on social media that it was now clear that “the majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance.”
DeSantis said he and his team had “prayed and deliberated” about how to move forward after he finished a distant second in last week's Iowa caucuses.
“I can't ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don't have a clear path to victory,” DeSantis added. “Accordingly, today I am suspending my campaign.”
“Clearance sale on all Ron DeSantis products today!” Gov. Gavin Newsom, who predicted that DeSantis would not be the Republican nominee when the pair debated on Fox News in November, wrote gleefully on X, formerly Twitter.
DeSantis received 21.2% of the vote in Iowa, well behind Trump's 51% and just two points ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who won 19.1%.
DeSantis said he disagreed with Trump over his handling of the pandemic and his “elevation” of chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, but argued that the former president “is superior to the incumbent, Joe Biden.”
In a visit to his campaign headquarters in New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon, Trump acknowledged the endorsement of DeSantis, whom he called a “very capable person.”
“Without the endorsement, I think we would have gotten almost all of those votes because we have very similar policies: strong borders, great education, low taxes, very, very few regulations,” Trump said.
In his farewell video, DeSantis also criticized Haley, who has been steadily rising in the polls.
“We cannot return to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents,” DeSantis said.
“He ran a great race, he's been a good governor and we wish him the best,” Haley said at an event in New Hampshire on Sunday afternoon, minutes after DeSantis dropped out of the race. “That being said, there is now one guy and one lady left. …All the guys are out except this one. And this comes down to, what do you want? Do you want more of the same or do you want something new?
DeSantis' sudden exit from the race effectively turns Tuesday's New Hampshire primary into a head-to-head battle between Haley and Trump. But DeSantis, several other Republicans who dropped out of the election and a group of lesser-known candidates will still appear on Tuesday's ballot.
Haley has staked her campaign on the Granite State, hoping to stem the Trump juggernaut by winning over moderate New Hampshire voters. Polls over the past two months showed she was closing in on the former president, and in early January, she appeared to be within striking distance. But after her unimpressive performance in Iowa last week, Haley's outlook in New Hampshire began to look bleaker.
Earlier on Sunday, the closely watched Suffolk University/NBC 10 Boston/Boston Globe tracking poll showed Trump finishing with 55% of the vote to Haley's 36%. In the same poll released Sunday, DeSantis was a distant third, with just 6%. Even if all DeSantis voters switched to Haley, the switch wouldn't be enough to erase Trump's lead.
DeSantis' decision to drop out will not benefit Haley much, said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.
“This makes the hill even steeper,” he said. “Most of those DeSantis voters are not going to vote for Haley. Some will stick with DeSantis anyway. Of those that remain, I have to think that the division will favor Trump. That makes things a little more complicated for Haley on Tuesday.”
Scala marveled at how quickly Trump seemed to be clinching the Republican nomination. “It's remarkable how quickly Trump is shutting things down,” Scala said.
“It's been day one and it takes some of these idiots a while to realize that they never had a chance in the first place,” Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said in an interview. “Trump's margin is growing by the hour and he is going to have a big victory on Tuesday.”
A year ago, DeSantis appeared to pose a formidable challenge to Trump, outperforming him in many polls of likely Republican primary voters.
A mid-February UC Berkeley IGS/Los Angeles Times poll of California Republicans, for example, found DeSantis leading Trump 37% to 29% in the state, which sends the largest delegation to the National Convention Republican. At the time, Republicans were still smarting from the losses they suffered in the 2022 midterm elections, which many in the party blamed on Trump, and many voters were open to DeSantis' argument that he could offer policies similar to those of Trump. Trump without the baggage that accompanied them.
But the force of that argument diminished as memories of the midterm losses began to fade. At the same time, three other developments undermined DeSantis' hopes: the criminal indictments against Trump turned many Republican voters to support the former president; Biden's standing in the polls began to decline, weakening the argument that Republicans needed someone other than Trump to defeat the incumbent; and Trump hit DeSantis with attacks that the Florida governor left largely unanswered, fearing the counterattack would alienate the Trump supporters he needed.
When DeSantis was at his peak, polls showed that much of his support came from Trump-skeptical Republicans: college-educated voters and more moderate Republicans who disliked the former president's style and some of his policies. But DeSantis directed his appeals primarily to Trump's core supporters, who make up the bulk of the Republican primary electorate. For a brief time, that approach seemed to work: Conservative voters were drawn to DeSantis because of his problematic positions and bellicose attacks on liberals and culture war goals, while moderates saw him as their best bet to win. to Trump.
But the strategy only worked while DeSantis appeared to be defeating Trump. Once his poll numbers began to decline, many of those moderate voters drifted away. Meanwhile, most conservatives seemed uninterested in anyone but Trump.
That set in motion a downward spiral that DeSantis proved unable to reverse. Between January and July, he lost about half of his support in average national polls conducted by FiveThirtyEight, a poll aggregator. In California, Trump regained the lead in mid-May and never relinquished it.
Over the course of the fall, DeSantis advisers fought bitterly — sometimes publicly — over strategy, and the candidate often appeared to be struggling as he searched for a way forward. DeSantis' campaign was plagued by a series of blunders, starting with his campaign launch, which took place on Twitter and was interrupted by technical issues.
Jason Roe, a leading DeSantis supporter who helped lead the presidential bids of Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, said the Florida governor's media strategy and his unwillingness to trust advisers outside his Florida circle led to his downfall. . Roe also said the campaign should have focused more on fundraising and communications.
“The campaign never found its footing,” said Roe, who was also a strategist for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. “The launch was clumsy, the restarts were clumsy. I think Trump brilliantly bracketed everything they tried to do to find direction for him. Once [Trump] “When he was charged, I think that made him unstoppable.”
A former staffer at Never Back Down, the super PAC that formed the backbone of DeSantis' campaign, was deeply disappointed by the Florida governor's decision to withdraw. But the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, questioned the organization's decision to hire in Super Tuesday states, including California and Texas, before it was clear DeSantis could survive the early contests. state.
“He's amazing. He did it in 99 counties,” the staffer said, referring to DeSantis' assault on Iowa. “He's not lazy. He's a hard worker. I really wish he was the right guy.”
