The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, announced this Sunday that he is abandoning the primaries for the Republican presidential nomination and gave his support to the candidacy of former president Donald Trump (2017-2021).
With his withdrawal, the internal race of the Republican Party is a matter of two candidates: former President Trump and former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley.
“We do not have a clear path to victory. That is why today I am suspending my campaign,” De Santis explained in a video broadcast through social networks, with two days left until the decisive New Hampshire primaries.
In his message, he assured that “it is clear that the majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance.”
DeSantos stated that he has had “disagreements” with Trump, but stated that he is a much better option than the current president, Joe Biden.
“You have my support because we cannot return to the old Republican guard of yesteryear,” said the governor, who attacked Haley, because he considers her a representative of “corporatism” and concessions to the ‘woke’ (progressive) ideology.
DeSantis, governor of Florida since 2019 and representative of the hard wing of the party, launched his candidacy in March of last year, when polls placed him as the only one capable of beating Trump in the primaries, but his image has been deflating in the last year.
In the Iowa caucuses on January 15, the first meeting of the Republican race, De Santis came in second place, behind Trump and ahead of Haley.
However, polls put him in third place, well behind his two rivals, in the key New Hampshire primary, which will be held next Tuesday.
In fact, the governor resigned on Saturday from campaigning in that state in the northeast of the country and canceled several interviews that he had planned this Sunday with American television.
Although Trump is the big favorite in the primaries, Nikki Haley has thrown herself into the campaign in New Hampshire to close the gap and establish herself as the alternative to Trump within the party.