Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once the leading Republican rival to former US president Donald Trump, on Sunday ended his election campaign and threw his support behind Trump.
DeSantis’ withdrawal, after months of weakening support, leaves only low-polling former UN ambassador Nikki Haley standing between Trump and nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate for the US presidential election in November.
In a video message, DeSantis said that following his second place finish last week in the Iowa caucuses, he could not ask “supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign.”
Photo: AP
The decision came less than two days before the New Hampshire primary, where polls showed him far behind front-runner Trump and Haley.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said, adding that he has had differences with the former president, notably over the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear or a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents,” he said.
Trump stormed to victory in Iowa on Tuesday last week, with 51 percent of Republican voters choosing the twice-impeached former president over DeSantis, who gained only 21 percent, and Haley at 19 percent.
No candidate has ever lost the race after claiming the first two states, and Trump would almost certainly declare the Republican nomination over with a win in New Hampshire.
His campaign said in a statement on Sunday that he was “honored” by DeSantis’ endorsement, and called for Republicans to rally behind him, dismissing Haley as “the candidate of the globalists and Democrats.”
“It’s time to choose wisely,” the statement said.
In her own statement, Haley said that the US is “not a country of coronations.”
“So far, only one state has voted. Half of its votes went to Donald Trump, and half did not... Voters deserve a say in whether we go down the road of Trump and [US President Joe] Biden again, or we go down a new conservative road,” she said.
Many Republicans had pinned their hopes on DeSantis, who at just 45 was embraced by some as a rising star of the right.
However, his candidacy, announced at the end of May, struggled to establish itself as a threat to 77-year-old Trump.
A former naval officer, DeSantis was elected in 2018 as governor in Florida after receiving Trump’s valuable endorsement in the Republican primary.
Since then, he often distanced himself from Trump and gained notoriety for hard-right stances on education, immigration and LGBTQ issues.
His state management of the pandemic, pushing for a rapid reopening of the economy during then-president Trump’s term and opposition to the policies of the Biden administration, made him an instant hit.
He then sought a national platform, but appeared stiff and uneasy at candidate debates, media interviews and voter events.
“I’m glad that he’s dropped out. I think that it was inevitable,” said Lynne Mason, 60, who runs a small business in Keene, New Hampshire.
“We need a strong leader right now, with the state of the United States at this point,” she said.
At an event in Seabrook, New Hampshire, Haley said DeSantis “ran a great race, he’s been a good governor, and we wish him well.”
“Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady,” she said. “This comes down to ‘what do you want?’ Do you want more of the same or do you want something new?”
Having previously avoided direct invectives against Trump, Haley later leaned into the frontrunner, telling CNN she is “not thin-skinned” like him and that she views him and 81-year-old Biden as “equally bad.”
“I don’t think we need to have two 80-year-olds sitting in the White House... We need to know they’re at the top of their game,” she said.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS