Ron DeSantis’ campaign is effectively over – a stunning fall for a man once believed to be a serious challenger to Donald Trump.
The announcement, confirmed in a statement, comes after a disappointing 18 months during which from the Florida Republican suffered several missteps.
Last week, the popular conservative was rejected by (most) of Iowa’s Republican voter base in favor of another Trump nod – a result that, while not unexpected, still stung for a campaign that sunk most of its resources into the state only to come up short.
It also left him uncomfortably close to a third-place finish following a campaign filled with gaffes – including viral videos of the governor laughing, and a decision to announce his bid Twitter, before being met with glitches and technical problems.
The campaign has also hemorrhaged staff as well as donors, whom sources earlier in the day claimed had been put off by DeSantis’s insistence to push against the woke.
In a video released Sunday, the 45-year-old conceded that he and his remaining staffers ‘[no longer] have a clear path to victory,’ and are thus calling it quits.
Hours earlier, several current and former DeSantis staffers painted a bleak picture of the currnet state his campaign.
One former adviser to a DeSantis super PAC told NBC News: ‘When they decided to do the Twitter Spaces launch, maybe then at that point, I knew they were stupid.’
The once shiny and hopeful idea of a DeSantis campaign was at its peak in the weeks after his astounding 20-point win in the state of Florida in November 2022 – the presidential campaign never came together as well as it seemed like they might at that time
Now, days ahead of the New Hampshire primary, where DeSantis is expected to come in third (of the three remaining candidates), former supporters are hoping for a quick end to the campaign
Despite the struggles, DeSantis – until Sunday afternoon – had maintained until the end that he was going to win Iowa.
He toured the whole of the state meeting with voters, and even earned the endorsement of both the state’s very popular governor Kim Reynolds, as well influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats.
But his retail politics play, which has often been rewarded by Iowa voters, did not pay off for the 45-year-old father of three in the notorious purple state – the first stop of many as state determine their preferred candidate.
The New Hampshire primary, meanwhile, had been slated for this week – though DeSantis – who in recent months had bet big on Iowa – had all but ignored it.
‘We haven’t spent very much money here,’ he told Fox News last week, before reports surfaced Sunday that the politician was mulling how to go about a graceful exit.
‘Nikki Haley is spending an inordinate amount of money here,’ he added at the time, before theorizing that Trump appeared to be benefitting from his big win in the battleground state.
That momentum, he conceded, looked to be poised to carry onto the next caucus stop in New Hampshire, where DeSantis would likely again placed behind not only Trump, but surprise runner-up Nikki Haley.
Not settling for third of three, DeSantis’ team looked poised to instead focus on South Carolina, a state that loves Trump and where Haley served as a governor for six years, though those plans now look to be a thing of the past.
Likely making the decision after becoming faced with the abject reality that he cannot beat Trump, his only remaining hope – that something will knock the frontrunner out of contention – also appears to be a fool’s errand.
Hours before his announcement – where he stoically told followers that he is ‘suspending my campaign’ – pne supporter told NBC that DeSantis, echoing statements he has long said publicly on the campaign trail, ‘believes there are multiple scenarios where Trump wouldn’t be the nominee.’
But Trump is lively and charismatic – perhaps metrics in which DeSantis fell short.
However, at 77, he is also somewhat long in the tooth – a fact that had provided the Florida politico some semblance of hope, given his rival’s candidacy, at least by comparison, was inherently risky and unpredictable.
More importantly, the former president also remains in serious, ongoing legal trouble – though, as the landslide result from Iowa last week suggests, that doesn’t seem to be stopping him from snagging the nomination.
That said, due to the uniqueness of the situation – as well as the lack of precedent – a conviction in one of his five criminal cases could potentially stop him from accepting the nomination.
DeSantis, as a result, had painted himself as the strong alternative to the frontrunner if he, for some reason, becomes unavailable due to his legal woes.
Needless to say, it is not how things were supposed to shake out for the man who won the formerly purple state of Florida by 20 points in a 2022 reelection following a successful first-term, and seemed poised to give Trump a serious challenge.
DeSantis has gone head-to-head with Nikki Haley and eked out a win over her camp in Iowa, but whether he can beat her in her own home state of South Carolina remains to be seen
Vivek Ramaswamy (left) who dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucus, immediately endorsed Donald Trump and will likely become a campaign surrogate
DeSantis, some speculate, is hanging on for now because of the potential that Trump could drop out due to unforeseen circumstances involving his age or legal troubles
One month after his unprecedented win in Florida, polls showed DeSantis beating both Trump and Biden in potential election cycle matchups.
At the time, support seemed to be waning for Trump after what had been another tough election cycle for Republicans – at least those outside the state of Florida.
DeSantis was positioned as the heir apparent to Trump’s Republican party, but the odds that Trump was really going to back down never seemed very high.
There was a moment when DeSantis was eating into Trump’s numbers so significantly, that a convincing argument could clearly be made, and was made to major backers, for his candidacy.
But he would wait another six months to officially declare his run for office. Momentum had already been lost, and a glitchy, underwhelming campaign rollout on Elon Musk’s newly revamped Twitter spaces was a bad omen for what was to come.
‘A total failure to launch,’ is how one former DeSantis adviser described it.
‘This thing blew up on the launch pad,’ he continued. A fitting metaphor given the announcement was hosted by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who certainly has experience with such things.
It was not long after the messy May 2023 start that troubled brewed amid the ranks of the DeSantis campaign and super PAC.
Personality clashes would launch thousands process stories that became a central theme of the media’s coverage of the DeSantis camp, and the fighting never really worked themselves out.
NBC reports that finances at both the DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down were mismanaged to varying degrees. But, poor decisions led to several cycles of boom and bust hiring and firing activity that became a highly reported bad look.
Ron and Casey DeSantis (left) put almost all of their campaign eggs into the Iowa basket, and came up tragically short
Trump, who DeSantis once looked like he may be a real threat to, is cruising toward the Republican nomination
And then came the money problems.
According to the NBC report, once momentum began to stall inside the campaign – which was almost immediately – DeSantis began struggling to directly fundraise for his team.
Notably, Citadel founder Ken Griffin, who had previously backed DeSantis’ political efforts, edged away from the campaign reportedly due to the governor’s focus on ‘culture war’ battles.
DeSantis tends to come down on the side of social conservatives, which may have been a problem for him during this primary cycle.
‘Losing Ken was big,’ a donor told NBC. ‘And the bigger problem was it sent a signal to others.’
The day DeSantis put rumors about his exit to bed, morale at his HQ was reportedly as low as it had ever been.
Staffers said they weren’t sure when the road will end for their fearless leader – telling the outlet they were hoping it would be sooner rather than later.
‘It’s done. He’s not going to win it. If you are serious about not wanting Trump to be the nominee, as much as it pains me to say this at this point, I think all the energy goes to Nikki Haley,’ said one former Never Back Down, DeSantis’s SuperPAC, operative.
‘I’m just really tired of all the infighting.’
Now the Republican primary is down to a two-person race with only former President Trump and his once-United Nations Ambassador Haley vying for the nomination.