Pence suspends campaign for president

Former Vice President Mike Pence has suspended his campaign for president amid lagging poll numbers and financial challenges, vowing to help elect “principled Republican leaders” moving forward.

“After much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today,” Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas on Saturday.

There was major concern in Pence’s campaign that he wasn’t going to qualify for the third debate stage next month, one source told CNN. That concern was a driving factor in Pence’s decision, a Republican adviser close to his campaign said, and several days of fundraising this week did little to alleviate that.

“There just weren’t enough donors,” the Republican adviser said.

“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. So help me God,” Pence said Saturday.

The decision to suspend was kept a close hold among advisers, multiple sources told CNN. Many event planners were unaware that the announcement would be made on stage.

Pence’s theory of his candidacy was simple – he broke from then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, and refocused on the core conservative principles that founded the modern Republican Party with Ronald Reagan, his political beacon.

Pence returned to that idea throughout his White House bid, from campaign signs intentionally harkening back to Reagan’s 1984 campaign to speeches urging his party to turn away from populism.

His exit from the 2024 race shows today’s GOP has long left that kind of conservatism he represents, reshaped by Trump, who continues to be the dominant candidate in the race, despite his legal troubles.

Pence, who was Indiana governor and a US congressman before being vice president, announced his campaign in early June. He chose to launch his campaign in Iowa, rather than his home state of Indiana, an indication of how much importance he was placing on the early voting state.

He attempted to visit all of Iowa’s 99 counties, focusing on face-to-face interactions in intimate settings. The Midwestern native leaned on his faith and courted fellow conservative evangelicals, a crucial voting bloc in the state.

This is breaking news and will be updated.