MANCHESTER, N.H. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once seen as the most formidable opponent to Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary, suspended his campaign Sunday and endorsed the former president.
The move comes two days before the New Hampshire primary.
DeSantis made the announcement in a video on X — the same social media platform where he did the glitchy rollout of his White House bid.
“Now, following our second-place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward,” he said. “If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources. We don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign.”
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” he said, adding: “He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”
Haley reacted to the news from the campaign trail in New Hampshire: “I want to say to Ron he 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 left.”
Since DeSantis came in second in Iowa on Monday, his campaign has sent mixed signals to voters, donors and lower-level aides, creating confusion about his intentions for the rest of the campaign.
He went directly to South Carolina from Iowa, a move apparently designed to bolster his insistence that he would stay in the race at least until that state’s late-February primary.
But then he bounced back and forth between South Carolina and New Hampshire, scheduling events in the Granite State with little warning for supporters and undecided voters who wanted to see him before Tuesday’s primary. He also quietly returned to Florida on Thursday with no public explanation.
He canceled appearances on Sunday-morning television programs — including NBC’s “Meet the Press” — late Saturday. The campaign also told surrogates to stand down from planned television appearances Sunday, according to one of the surrogates.
By Sunday morning, advisers and donors said they did not know whether he would drop out — but had begun speculating that he would. A source familiar with DeSantis’ campaign said he made the decision to exit the race Sunday afternoon.
DeSantis’ decision came as a sudden surprise to allies at Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that cannot coordinate with the governor’s campaign. One official with the PAC was New Hampshire-bound for more DeSantis events as the news broke. “Do you think I’d be going there if I thought otherwise?” the official said when asked if they had heard rumblings of a DeSantis dropout.
Trump and his allies began dropping hints that a DeSantis withdrawal was imminent Saturday night, with Trump saying as much at a rally in Manchester.
“We might get Ron DeSantis back onside pretty soon,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a Trump backer who was close to the governor before the 2024 campaign began, said Sunday.
The campaign against Trump
DeSantis sought to position himself as an alternative to Trump, trying to cast himself as a politically successful heir to the MAGA movement and its preferred policies without Trump’s baggage. But in his bid to court Trump’s supporters, DeSantis was slow to meaningfully criticize the former president and was unable to peel away enough of his support. DeSantis’ embrace of hard-right policies also led moderate Republicans and independents to look elsewhere in their search for a candidate to steer the GOP in a different direction from Trump.
DeSantis entered the Republican presidential race with an impressive political operation and widespread popularity in the party after achieving a blowout 2022 re-election win in Florida, which had for decades been one of the most tightly divided states in the nation.
But the momentum DeSantis had at the start dissipated amid relentless attacks from the Trump machine as well as his own missteps. The pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. spent over $10 million attacking DeSantis before he even announced his candidacy for president, according to campaign finance records.
The early ad campaign slashed at the Florida governor with TV spots criticizing votes he took in Congress on Social Security, Medicare and taxes, and it didn’t let up. MAGA Inc. spent more than $23 million on anti-DeSantis advertising, campaign finance records show — and the super PAC backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley spent even more hitting DeSantis as they began clashing in Iowa in the fall.
When DeSantis officially launched his White House bid in May, a glitchy Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk became emblematic of a campaign that was often overshadowed by infighting, financial troubles, and a complicated partnership with the super PAC Never Back Down.
At the core of DeSantis’ campaign message was a pitch to bring his Florida blueprint to the nation. The governor pledged to dismantle the federal government’s “administrative state,” finish the southern border wall, and limit Chinese influence in the United States and abroad.
The firebrand conservative issues that became fixtures of his administration in Florida found their way to the campaign, too. He weaved his signature war on “woke” through several policy proposals, including ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government, barring transgender service members from the military, and banning gender-affirming medical care for minors.
As one of the only sitting executives in the race, DeSantis at times flexed the power of his office in Tallahassee in step with his campaign rhetoric. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, DeSantis mobilized the Florida Department of Emergency Management to organize evacuation flights as the war raged, with those efforts extracting nearly 700 American citizens from the Middle East.
Even before launching his White House bid, DeSantis sent Florida law enforcement and National Guard members to the southern border to support the efforts of Texas officials there. (The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, ultimately endorsed Trump.)
Trump always posed a difficult obstacle for the governor to overcome, particularly at the start of his bid. The two candidates’ trajectories had been entwined for years — Trump had elevated DeSantis’ career with an endorsement that helped rocket the then-congressman to the Republican nomination for governor in Florida in 2018. Yet DeSantis’ presidential aspirations hinged on the prospect of a party ready to ditch their firebrand populist leader.
While Trump’s candidacy was often overshadowed by his legal woes and baggage from his term in office, DeSantis often declined to criticize the front-runner in the early months of his campaign as he sought to win over his voters. In rarer moments, DeSantis generated headlines with comments about Trump’s lackluster response during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol or the political failures of his election denialism.
By the end of his run, DeSantis was regularly attacking Trump in his stump speech, chiding the former president for not following through on 2016 campaign promises like building a border wall, for refusing to join primary debates, and for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Criticisms notwithstanding, DeSantis said that as president, he would pardon Trump if he were convicted on any of the federal charges he faces.
Meanwhile, the messages of the campaign were often eclipsed by internal personnel and financial struggles on the DeSantis team.
Barely two months into DeSantis’ run, the governor’s campaign ran into financial trouble and fired roughly a dozen midlevel staffers as a cost-cutting measure — and then dismissed nearly two dozen more a week later. Not long after, the governor replaced campaign manager Generra Peck with a longtime loyalist, governor’s office chief of staff James Uthmeier. As financial troubles roiled the campaign, DeSantis leaned heavily on Never Back Down’s support, letting the PAC fund most of the television advertisements and events.
The super PAC also suffered its fair share of internal drama.
Ahead of the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa, the DeSantis campaign, with help from the PAC, built a formidable ground operation in the Hawkeye State, devoting significant time and effort there. The governor visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties, super PAC staff knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors, and the governor scored endorsements from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and the influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats.
In the closing weeks of his campaign, DeSantis not only worked to close the polling gap between himself and the former president, but spent significant time and money to stave off a surging Haley in Iowa. He accused Haley of lacking proper conservative credentials, seizing on missteps like misnaming a University of Iowa basketball star and for saying that the New Hampshire primary serves as a correction to the results of Iowa’s caucuses.
But the traditional Iowa playbook — one that worked for past caucus winners like Ted Cruz — did not prove effective enough against Trump’s pseudo-incumbency and immovable support inside the Republican electorate. DeSantis finished well behind Trump and only barely managed to block Haley from the runner-up spot.
After celebrating a second-place finish as a victory, DeSantis opted to first visit South Carolina instead of making the traditional overnight trip for presidential candidates from Des Moines, Iowa, to Manchester, New Hampshire. The move, DeSantis and his allies hoped, would signal the governor’s campaign was built for the long haul, including into the Super Tuesday elections in March.
Those hopes did not come to fruition.
DeSantis has three years remaining in his second and final term as the governor of Florida.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.
The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.
More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.
J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.
“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.
Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.
“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.
Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.
Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.
Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.
Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.
Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”
“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”
Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.
The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.
A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.
When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A 33-day provincial election campaign is expected to officially get started today in New Brunswick.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has said he plans to visit Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy this morning to have the legislature dissolved.
Higgs, a 70-year-old former oil executive, is seeking a third term in office, having led the province since 2018.
The campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote is expected to focus on pocketbook issues, but the government’s provocative approach to gender identity issues could also be in the spotlight.
The Tory premier has already announced he will try to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, both of whom are focusing on economic and social issues.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VICTORIA – If the lead up to British Columbia‘s provincial election campaign is any indication of what’s to come, voters should expect the unexpected.
It could be a wild ride to voting day on Oct. 19.
The Conservative Party of B.C. that didn’t elect a single member in the last election and gained less than two per cent of the popular vote is now leading the charge for centre-right, anti-NDP voters.
The official Opposition BC United, who as the former B.C. Liberals won four consecutive majorities from 2001 to 2013, raised a white flag and suspended its campaign last month, asking its members, incumbents and voters to support the B.C. Conservatives to prevent a vote split on the political right.
New Democrat Leader David Eby delivered a few political surprises of his own in the days leading up to Saturday’s official campaign start, signalling major shifts on the carbon tax and the issue of involuntary care in an attempt to curb the deadly opioid overdose crisis.
He said the NDP would drop the province’s long-standing carbon tax for consumers if the federal government eliminates its requirement to keep the levy in place, and pledged to introduce involuntary care of people battling mental health and addiction issues.
The B.C. Coroners Service reports more than 15,000 overdose deaths since the province declared an opioid overdose public health emergency in 2016.
Drug policy in B.C., especially decriminalization of possession of small amounts of hard drugs and drug use in public areas, could become key election issues this fall.
Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Wednesday that criticism of the NDP’s involuntary care plan by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is “misinformed” and “misleading.”
“This isn’t about forcing people into a particular treatment,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “This is about making sure that their safety, as well as the safety of the broader community, is looked after.”
Eby said “simplistic arguments,” where one side says lock people up and the other says don’t lock anybody up don’t make sense.
“There are some people who should be in jail, who belong in jail to ensure community safety,” said Eby. “There are some people who need to be in intensive, secure mental health treatment facilities because that’s what they need in order to be safe, in order not to be exploited, in order not to be dead.”
The CCLA said in a statement Eby’s plan is not acceptable.
“There is no doubt that substance use is an alarming and pressing epidemic,” said Anais Bussières McNicoll, the association’s fundamental freedoms program director. “This scourge is causing significant suffering, particularly, among vulnerable and marginalized groups. That being said, detaining people without even assessing their capacity to make treatment decisions, and forcing them to undergo treatment against their will, is unconstitutional.”
While Eby, a noted human rights lawyer, could face political pressure from civil rights opponents to his involuntary care plans, his opponents on the right also face difficulties.
The BC United Party suspended its campaign last month in a pre-election move to prevent a vote split on the right, but that support may splinter as former jilted United members run as Independents.
Five incumbent BC United MLAs, Mike Bernier, Dan Davies, Tom Shypitka, Karin Kirkpatrick and Coralee Oakes are running as Independents and could become power brokers in the event of a minority government situation, while former BC United incumbents Ian Paton, Peter Milobar and Trevor Halford are running under the B.C. Conservative banner.
Davies, who represents the Fort St. John area riding of Peace River North, said he’s always been a Conservative-leaning politician but he has deep community roots and was urged by his supporters to run as an Independent after the Conservatives nominated their own candidate.
Davies said he may be open to talking with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad after the election, if he wins or loses.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested her party is an option for alienated BC United voters.
Rustad — who faced criticism from BC United Leader Kevin Falcon and Eby about the far-right and extremist views of some of his current and former candidates and advisers — said the party’s rise over the past months has been meteoric.
“It’s been almost 100 years since the Conservative Party in B.C. has won a government,” he said. “The last time was 1927. I look at this now and I think I have never seen this happen anywhere in the country before. This has been happening in just over a year. It just speaks volumes that people are just that eager and interested in change.”
Rustad, ejected from the former B.C. Liberals in August 2022 for publicly supporting a climate change skeptic, sat briefly as an Independent before being acclaimed the B.C. Conservative leader in March 2023.
Rustad, who said if elected he will fire B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry over her vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, has removed the nominations of some of his candidates who were vaccine opponents.
“I am not interested in going after votes and trying to do things that I think might be popular,” he said.
Prof. David Black, a political communications specialist at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the rise of Rustad’s Conservatives and the collapse of BC United is the political story of the year in B.C.
But it’s still too early to gauge the strength of the Conservative wave, he said.
“Many questions remain,” said Black. “Has the free enterprise coalition shifted sufficiently far enough to the right to find the social conservatism and culture-war populism of some parts of the B.C. Conservative platform agreeable? Is a party that had no infrastructure and minimal presence in what are now 93 ridings this election able to scale up and run a professional campaign across the province?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
