Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis halted his fraught bid to become the 2024 Republican nominee for the White House on Sunday afternoon, ending a Quixote-esque battle against former President Donald Trump.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” he said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, according to the Associated Press.
New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary kicks off on Tuesday at midnight, with Dixville Notch’s six registered voters expected to vote when polls open – a tradition that began with the 1960 elections.
DeSantis took another swipe at former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who remains in the primary race, saying Republicans “can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”
Although the governor and his allies created a formidable campaign war chest of over $110 million in state and federal committees in 2023, based on Federal Election Commission reports, DeSantis never quite landed the political punch needed to become a serious challenger against the former president. He lost the Iowa caucuses — which he had vowed to win — by 30 percentage points to Trump.
The former GOP contender is expected to focus on the rest of his second and final term as Florida’s governor, which ends in January 2027.
