DeSantis Suspends Presidential Campaign

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and has suspended his campaign, he announced Sunday.

"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 said in a video posted Sunday afternoon to social media.

He also in the video endorsed former president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

"It's clear to me that a majority of Republicam primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance," DeSantis said, calling Trump "superior to the current incumbent Joe Biden" and noting his pledge to support the Republican nominee.

The move comes ahead of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Republican primary on Tuesday and just days after he lost the Iowa caucuses — which he had vowed to win — by 30 percentage points to Trump.

The Trump campaign said in a statement Sunday it was "honored" by DeSantis' endorsement.

"It is now time for all Republicans to rally behind President Trump to defeat Crooked Joe Biden and end his disastrous presidency," the statement said.

DeSantis' distant second in Iowa barely outpaced former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has established herself in recent weeks as a Trump alternative for more moderate-leaning voters. In his announcement Sunday, DeSantis referred to Haley as representing "the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed over corporatism."

Haley spoke at a campaign stop in Seabrook, New Hampshire, just as DeSantis announced his decision.

“He ran a great race, he’s been a good governor, and we wish him well,” she told a room packed with supporters and media. “Having said that, it’s now one fella and one lady left."

An ambitious big-state governor, DeSantis entered the 2024 presidential contest with major advantages in his quest to take on Trump, and early primary polls suggested he was in a strong position to do just that. He and his allies amassed a political fortune well in excess of $100 million, and he boasted a significant legislative record on issues important to many conservatives, like abortion and the teaching of race and gender issues in schools.

DeSantis was widely expected to be a serious Trump challenger. Acknowledging the threat, Trump went after the Florida governor viciously in the months leading up to DeSantis' May announcement and continued to pound him on the campaign trail, on social media and in paid advertising in the months that followed.

Yet many of DeSantis' problems may have been his own doing.

Fueled by his dominant Florida reelection in 2022, DeSantis sidestepped tradition by announcing his presidential campaign on X, in a conversation on the social media site with CEO Elon Musk. The site failed repeatedly during the conversation, making it all but impossible to hear his opening remarks as a presidential candidate.

In the subsequent weeks and months, DeSantis struggled to connect with voters on a personal level under the unforgiving bright lights of the presidential stage.

He irked some New Hampshire Republican officials in his campaign's inaugural visit to New Hampshire by declining to take questions from voters, as is tradition in the state. And later, uncomfortable interactions with voters in other states were caught on camera as well.

More serious financial challenges emerged over the summer.

By the end of July, DeSantis had laid off nearly 40 employees in a move designed to cut roughly one-third of his campaign payroll. The cuts came shortly after public filings revealed that he was burning through his substantial campaign coffers at an unsustainable rate.

As internal financial concerns mounted, DeSantis turned aggressively to an allied super PAC to handle basic campaign functions such as organizing campaign events, advertising and an expansive door-knocking operation.

Federal law does not allow campaigns to coordinate directly with super PACs. In December, a nonpartisan government watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, citing reporting by The Associated Press and others, alleging that the degree of coordination and communication between DeSantis' campaign and the Never Back Down super PAC crossed a legal line.

DeSantis denied any wrongdoing and called the complaint "a farce."

The campaign appeared low on funds, The New York Times reported, noting a pro-DeSantis ad had not run on New Hampshire television since before Thanksgiving.

Throughout his campaign, DeSantis' national poll numbers dropped by about half, according to the Times.

"Trump’s indictments — starting in late March — marked the start of a polling decline for DeSantis with voters who approve of the former president," The Washington Post reported. "In polling and focus groups, DeSantis backers and other Republicans found that many seemingly logical lines of attack on Trump were ineffective."

Despite leading Trump in New Hampsire at the start of the year, DeSantis was polling at only 6 percent of the vote ahead of Tuesday's primary, according to the Times, which added the final days of his campaign were chaotic, marked by postponements, cancellations and unpredictability.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.