Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, after coming in last place at the Iowa caucuses. Hutchinson earned just 0.2% of the vote in Monday’s caucuses, finishing a distant sixth place.
Hutchinson, who ran an anti-Trump campaign, said in a statement: “My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front-runner did not sell in Iowa. I stand by the campaign I ran.” The former Arkansas governor spent much of his campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he was a vocal critic of Trump, even suggesting that the former president might be disqualified from running in 2024 under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which has a provision barring candidates who have engaged in insurrection. Hutchinson said last year in an interview with NBC News: “Whenever you’re looking at four indictments, and the fact that not everybody can recite what each of those indictments entail, they know this is not good for our country, and that no one under that kind of pressure can lead our country, particularly with a mindset that he wants to get revenge as the next president. And so if anyone should drop out, it should be Donald Trump.”
Hutchinson highlighted his two terms as Arkansas governor while campaigning, as well as touting prior leading roles at the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration. Hutchinson also criticized the Biden administration’s economic and border policies while calling for the U.S. to become more energy independent. And while Hutchinson reached the Republican National Committee’s polling threshold to qualify for the party’s first debate in Milwaukee in August, he did not meet the higher polling requirements for subsequent debates.
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