Asa Hutchinson Withdraws from 2024 US Presidential Race
After failing to register in the Iowa caususes, Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has announced that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Hutchinson notched 0.2% of the vote in Monday's caucuses, finishing a distant sixth after an anti-Trump campaign that did not gain traction for the veteran Republican in the new GOP.
In a statement made by Hutchinson, "I stand by the campaign I ran. My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front-runner did not sell in Iowa."
Hutchinson dedicated a significant portion of his campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, actively criticizing Trump. He went as far as suggesting that the former president could potentially be ineligible to run in 2024 under the 14th Amendment due to its provision barring candidates involved in insurrection.
“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,” Hutchinson said last year in an interview with NBC News. “And so if anyone should drop out, it should be Donald Trump.”
Hutchinson also highlighted his two terms as Arkansas governor along with prior leading roles at the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, while on the campaign trail. Hutchinson further criticized the Biden administration’s economic and border policies while calling for the U.S. to become more energy independent.
Hutchinson reached the Republican National Committee’s polling threshold to qualify for the party’s first debate in Milwaukee in August, but he did not meet the higher polling requirements for subsequent debates.
