(Las Vegas, NV) – Former Vice President and Indiana Governor Mike Pence was met with audible gasps and spats of applause when he made a surprise announcement on Saturday that he was suspending his campaign for President — becoming the first major candidate to drop out of the race.
“The Bible tells us, that there’s a time for every purpose under heaven. Traveling across the country over the past six months, I came here to say, it’s become clear to me, this is not my time. So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective immediately,” Pence said on stage at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas.
“I’m leaving this campaign, but let me promise you I will never leave the fight for conservative values and I will never stop fighting to elect principled, Republican leaders to every office in the land,” he continued.
On the trail, he leaned into what he viewed as policy wins for the Trump administration while trying to distance himself from Trump’s controversial leadership style, often calling for politicians, instead, “to restore a threshold of civility in public life.”
Pence’s support for military aid to Ukraine set him apart from other Republican candidates. He also pushed the primary field to commit to a minimum 15-week abortion ban at the federal level and called for entitlement reforms, conservative issues he accused his “former running mate and his imitators” of “walking away from.”
But Pence struggled to win over voters fiercely loyal to Trump, unable to rise in the poll beyond the single digits despite a packed summer in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
While Pence put in the work expected of a top-tier campaign, making at least 10 trips to Iowa and five to New Hampshire as a candidate, often it was just a few dozen attendees at his campaign events to greet him. Volunteers and staffers seemed to struggle to fill the rooms he rented.
“You can clap at that,” Pence would often say, coaxing the crowd to applause, prompting comparisons to a similar request from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during his ill-fated 2016 presidential bid.
Pence said Saturday he has no regrets about his bid for president.
“The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we’d never tried at all,” he said. “To the American people, I say this is not my time. But it’s still your time.”
(Story by our partners at ABC News)
