Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami and 2024 Republican presidential candidate, speaks on the Des Moines Register political soapbox in the course of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday, Aug. 11, 2023.
Rachel Mummey | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced Tuesday he’s suspending his presidential campaign, making him the primary Republican primary candidate to drop out of the race.
The longshot candidate’s decision got here lower than per week after he did not qualify for the primary GOP primary debate in Milwaukee. Suarez had previously suggested he would end his campaign if he didn’t make the controversy stage.
“While I actually have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to creating this a greater nation for each American stays,” Suarez wrote in a lengthy post on X, the platform formerly often called Twitter, on Tuesday afternoon.
Suarez, 45, entered the already-crowded Republican primary field in June, much later than many of the top contenders — especially former President Donald Trump, whose 2024 campaign launched seven months earlier.
National polls of the first that included Suarez consistently placed him near the underside of the pack.
Suarez, a Cuban American, touted his Hispanic heritage and billed himself as a unifier in a politically polarized country. He also ran on his record courting the tech industry to take a position in Miami, and leaned into his pro-cryptocurrency views by accepting campaign donations in bitcoin.
“I’ll proceed to amplify the voices of the Hispanic community – the fastest-growing voting group in our country,” Suarez said in Tuesday’s post.
“I sit up for keeping in contact with the opposite Republican presidential candidates and doing what I can to ensure that our party puts forward a powerful nominee who can encourage and unify the country, renew Americans’ trust in our institutions and in one another, and win,” he wrote.
Suarez was the third Republican from Florida to run for the 2024 presidential nomination, sharing that trait with Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But while Trump has set free a relentless barrage of attacks against the governor, the previous president rarely, if ever, mentioned the mayor.
Suarez had pulled out in any respect the stops to fulfill the Republican National committee’s qualifications for the primary primary debate. To hit the 40,000-donor minimum threshold, Suarez raffled off tickets to soccer legend Lionel Messi’s first Inter Miami game.
The mayor claimed he had secured enough donors and received 1% support in at the least three accepted national polls, one other requirement. However the RNC left him off its list of eight qualifying candidates, prompting his campaign to go dark for nearly per week.
In Iowa earlier this month, Suarez said, “For those who cannot meet the minimum thresholds, you should not be attempting to take time and volume away from those who do.”
Trump, in a Truth Social post later Tuesday afternoon, singled out who he thinks needs to be the subsequent Republican dropout: his arch-critic, former Recent Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Christie “SHOULD DROP OUT OF THE RACE,” Trump wrote in a post that did indirectly reference Suarez. “HE IS GOING NOWHERE AND IS VERY BAD FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!”
