Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced he is suspending his 2024 long-shot presidential campaign after coming in last place at the Iowa caucuses.
The former Arkansas governor has been a consistent critic of former President Donald Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses convincingly and remains the Republican front-runner in other early states.
“I congratulate Donald J. Trump for his win last night in Iowa and to the other candidates who competed and garnered delegate support. Today, I am suspending my campaign for President and driving back to Arkansas,” Hutchinson said in a statement Tuesday morning.
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Although he announced his candidacy early in the 2024 campaign, Hutchinson had trouble winning support from Republican voters, polling in the low single digits from the outset of the race.
“My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front runner did not sell in Iowa,” Hutchinson added in his dropout statement.
The former governor got a total of 191 votes in the Iowa caucuses, or 0.2% of the total, according to preliminary results released by the Republican Party of Iowa. His total was the lowest of the five major candidates who competed in the state, with only Chris Christie, who dropped out last week, and “other” candidates receiving fewer votes.
Hutchinson also struggled to meet the Republican National Committee’s increasingly higher thresholds to participate in the GOP presidential debates.
Hutchinson, who also represented Arkansas 3rd District in Congress, was one of the few Republicans who sought to set himself apart from Trump. He said it was “inappropriate” for his GOP rivals to talk about pardoning the former president if he is convicted in either of the two federal criminal cases that are scheduled to go to trial this year.
On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, Hutchinson told “Face the Nation” that Trump had “redefined the Republican Party, and not in a good way.”
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