Miami Mayor Francis Suarez spent months struggling to get the campaign donations, attention and support he needed to keep his long-shot quest for the Republican presidential nomination alive.
That ended Tuesday, when Suarez announced he would be suspending his campaign, making him the first Republican to drop out of a nomination contest that is both crowded and heavily favoring former President Donald Trump.
“While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains," Suarez said in a statement.
“I look forward to keeping in touch with the other Republican presidential candidates and doing what I can to make sure our party puts forward a strong nominee who can inspire and unify the country, renew Americans’ trust in our institutions and in each other, and win.”
Suarez did not offer his endorsement to any of the remaining candidates.
Suarez failed to make the debate stage in Milwaukee, despite having reached, he claimed, the threshold for 40,000 individual donors. In his quest to get more donations, Suarez offered people a chance to get front-row seats to see legendary Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi in his first game playing for Inter Miami.
But with dismal polling numbers – the last three major surveys had Suarez with zero support of GOP primary voters – Suarez did not qualify for the debate stage. While campaigning in New Hampshire weeks ago, Suarez said that candidates who did not meet the thresholds for the Milwaukee debate should drop out.
As the only Hispanic in the GOP presidential race, Suarez – the 45-year-old son of Miami's first Cuban-born mayor – at first appeared to be someone who could build on the party's inroads among Latino voters. Exit polls show that Hispanics – especially in Republican Florida – are moving more toward the GOP, although Democrats still hold a commanding lead among the voter group nationally and in battleground states like Arizona and Colorado.
Suarez was also an early proponent of vaccinations for COVID-19. He has clashed with his state's GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, criticizing his foe for the GOP presidential nomination for the expansion of the "don’t say gay" law in schools and the handling of the slavery curriculum in classrooms.
Nor has Suarez been a reliable enemy of President Joe Biden. At an event at the White House in early 2021, Suarez said he spoke with the president about the pandemic and climate change, adding that he had more communication with the Democratic president than with Trump, when he was president.
"I've spoken to the president and vice president more times in the short period that they have been in office than I had spoken to the prior administration entirely," Suarez said at the time. "To me, that's an intentional desire on their part to really plug in with the mayors."
In the months he has been campaigning, however, Suarez – who did not support Trump in 2016 or 2020 – has shied away from criticizing the GOP's front-runner. In June, Suarez hinted he would pardon Trump, saying the tool is useful for presidents to “heal the country.”
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