佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯在去年的大部分时间里被誉为共和党的一颗新星，他即将结束自己的任期总统竞选此前他在民调中或在2024年大选的早期投票中未能超过竞争对手唐纳德·特朗普。
德桑蒂斯在一段四分半钟的视频中宣布了这一消息发布到X周日，在距离新罕布什尔州初选投票不到48小时的时候，该州是提名竞争中的第二个州。
“我们没有一条明确的胜利之路，”他在视频中说，他说视频是在佛罗里达州拍摄的。
他的退出现在使初选基本上成为特朗普和特朗普前驻联合国大使妮基·黑利之间的一对一较量，后者在民调中继续落后于特朗普，在爱荷华州党团会议中排名第三，德桑蒂斯在该州以21%的得票率排名第二，特朗普以51%的得票率排名第一。
相应的去投票站海莉周二在新罕布什尔州最有可能击败特朗普。
德桑蒂斯周日迅速支持特朗普，这是他在竞选过程中日益批评的主要对手。
“我很清楚，大多数共和党初选选民希望再给唐纳德·特朗普一次机会。...虽然我与唐纳德·特朗普有过分歧，比如在冠状病毒疫情和他提升(新冠肺炎顾问)安东尼·福奇的问题上，但特朗普优于现任总统乔·拜登。这很清楚，”德桑蒂斯在他的视频中说。“我签署了支持共和党提名人的誓言，我将履行这一誓言。”
德桑蒂斯在2024年开始时是特朗普的失败挑战者，但他进入2023年时被视为最有可能赢得党内总统候选人提名的共和党人。
2022年11月，德桑蒂斯在佛罗里达州州长官邸以两位数的优势连任，在2018年刚刚选举他的一个著名摇摆州获胜。2023年3月的民调数据显示，他落后特朗普不到15个百分点。根据538。
德桑蒂斯还经常吹嘘他在该州的保守派胜利记录。在该州，共和党人越来越多地赢得了一些地方选举，尽管与特朗普结盟的候选人在该国其他地方的高调竞选中苦苦挣扎。
他说，他在佛罗里达州取得的成就包括反对堕胎权、在新冠肺炎疫情最严重时期高调抵制联邦卫生当局的建议(他认为这是官僚主义的不自量力)以及他认为许多K-12学生不应该接受关于性少数群体问题的公立学校教育，因为这不适合他们的年龄。
后一种立场是通过《教育中的父母权利法案》制定的，被性少数群体的倡导者广泛谴责为带有偏见，这有助于巩固德桑蒂斯作为共和党战士的国家形象，但引发了与佛罗里达州最大的私营雇主之一华特·迪士尼公司的长期不和。(迪士尼还拥有ABC新闻。)
迪士尼提起诉讼，声称德桑蒂斯及其盟友对该公司进行报复，因为该公司公开反对《教育中的父母权利法》，批评者称该法为“不要说同性恋”，该法的支持者拒绝接受这一标签。
随着与迪士尼的法律斗争持续进行，否认出于政治动机的报复的德桑蒂斯表示，该州“基本上已经向前迈进了”迪士尼的诉讼仍悬而未决，迪士尼和德桑蒂斯任命的一个新董事会之间的决斗诉讼也悬而未决，该董事会负责监管该公司主题公园周围的区域。
2023年初，在正式参加总统竞选之前，德桑蒂斯用一本新书——《自由的勇气》来吹捧他在佛罗里达州的胜利，同时调侃说，只有在他所在的州举行了“最有成效的立法会议”之后，他才会进入白宫。
当时，海利和特朗普都已经在竞选活动中。
2023年5月，埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)在X(原名Twitter)上主持了德桑蒂斯的正式启动仪式，得到了大量的预期报道，但受到了一些小故障的影响，很快就演变成了一场密集的、非电视直播的关于政策和文化战争问题的讨论，这些问题也成为了德桑蒂斯竞选活动的定义。
他在竞选中的巡回演讲经常充斥着“醒来”和“灌输”等对基层友好的流行语以及“DEI”等首字母缩写词，指的是多样性、公平和包容倡议，许多保守派人士反对这些倡议，认为它们没有必要以种族为重点。
德桑蒂斯的妻子凯西(Casey)曾是一名电视记者，也是一名值得信赖的顾问，她有时会和丈夫一起外出采访，试图提供一种人们常说的州长所缺乏的亲切感。
但她的露面很短暂，最终这对夫妇在爱荷华州的两端度过了大部分时间，佛罗里达州的第一夫人与选民举行了自己的亲密活动，而她的丈夫则召集了更大的团体。
这对夫妇有三个孩子，他们把一些竞选活动变成了家庭事务，比如8月份他们参观了爱荷华州戴尔斯维尔著名的“梦想之地”棒球场。
最近几周，德桑蒂斯夫妇在12月访问爱荷华州时向选民讲述了他们的孩子第一次体验雪的经历。
周日，罗恩·德桑蒂斯回顾了一些经历，感谢工作人员、支持者和家人对他竞选活动的支持。
在发起竞选后不久的夏季几个月里，德桑蒂斯采取了一种孤立的行动，与主流媒体保持距离——就像他在竞选州长连任时经常做的那样——并对领先的特朗普保持火力，只有在记者或选民要求时才直接与特朗普交锋。
这一策略导致了一些尴尬时刻，比如6月在新罕布什尔州，当一名选民问他1月6日的情况时，他回答说:“那天我不在华盛顿附近。”
在竞选的最后几天和几周，德桑蒂斯直言不讳地批评了特朗普的记录，但未能在共和党选民的民意调查中形成很大势头。
德桑蒂斯还多次忍受裁员引发的负面头条新闻;与他的盟友超级政治行动委员会的内讧，该委员会组织了他的大部分竞选活动;以及他的高消费率，这让他花光了巨额筹款中的相当一部分。
当州长似乎在秋季找到自己的立足点时，他先前在民意调查中的优势已经严重削弱，他正在听到海莉的脚步声。
这位前南卡罗来纳州州长在夏季和秋季进行了多次广受好评的辩论表演，民调显示支持率稳步上升，甚至在冬季的许多调查中超过了德桑蒂斯，因为两人都试图将自己标榜为更强大的特朗普替代者。
德桑蒂斯对海莉的崛起做出了回应，称她不那么保守——需要在共和党以外的反特朗普选民中支持她的竞选活动。
周日，海利对德桑蒂斯竞选活动的结束做出了回应，称赞了他。
她说:“我想对罗恩说:他跑了一场伟大的比赛，他是一位好州长，我们祝他一切顺利。”
“话虽如此，”她补充道，“现在只剩下一男一女了。...愿最优秀的女性获胜。”
特朗普竞选团队在他们自己的声明中表示，他们对德桑蒂斯的支持感到“荣幸”。竞选团队表示:“现在是时候让所有共和党人团结在特朗普总统身后，击败不老实的乔·拜登，结束他灾难性的总统任期了。
特朗普周日晚些时候告诉记者，他用来嘲笑德桑蒂斯的首选昵称是“正式退休”。
密集的竞选日程和对爱荷华州的押注
德桑蒂斯向选民宣传自己是最努力工作的候选人，并经常有收据为证。
夏末，他开始在爱荷华州进行激烈的竞选活动，该州举行了第一次提名竞选，他在1月份的党团会议之前访问了所有99个县(他在12月初完成了这一壮举)。
在爱荷华州的旅行主要由支持州长的财大气粗的超级政治行动委员会“永不退让”领导。
该组织的工作人员乘坐一辆两边印有德桑蒂斯名字的红蓝相间的巴士，带领他走遍了该州的各个角落。
这些停留包括会见明尼苏达州边境附近赖特县农村一家肉类食品储藏库的所有者，以及在密西西比河岸边的数百名支持者面前集会。
一路上，德桑蒂斯一直指责特朗普没有做出同样的努力，指责这位前总统认为选民是理所当然的。
然而，州长的问题是许多选民似乎并不在乎。德桑蒂斯参加的竞选活动越多，他的支持率就越低。据538网站报道，这种模式表明，德桑蒂斯失去的选民比他赢得的选民多。
到秋季结束时，德桑蒂斯获得提名的最佳机会已经缩小到一个明确的场景，尽管这种场景很遥远:在1月份的爱荷华州党团会议上取得优异成绩，福音派共和党人被认为与他深刻的社会保守主义更一致，并希望这将打破特朗普不可战胜的光环。
在该州受欢迎的共和党州长金·雷诺兹和著名福音派领袖鲍勃·范德·普劳斯的支持下，德桑蒂斯听起来对自己的机会充满信心至少在一段时间内如此。
有几次，他发誓要赢得该州，甚至就在去年12月。
一个乏味的党团会议之夜
德桑蒂斯不仅没有赢得党团会议，还落后特朗普30分，仅略高于对该州关注较少的哈雷。
“唐纳德·特朗普宣布了(在爱荷华州的)胜利，所以我认为他受益于这里的势头，”德桑蒂斯周五在新罕布什尔州接受福克斯新闻频道采访时承认，他在新罕布什尔州的民调明显落后于海利。
为了让他的竞选活动忙碌起来，德桑蒂斯和他的助手在爱荷华州结束后表示，他将在南卡罗来纳州花更多的时间——他公开坚持认为，他可以在2月24日共和党初选之前在海莉的家乡州削弱海莉，并将她挤出竞选。
德桑蒂斯周六在南卡罗来纳州参加了三场比赛。这是他最后一整天的竞选活动。
‘下次‘
在他最后几天的旅程中，德桑蒂斯似乎对他2024年申办的命运逆来顺受。
周二在南卡罗来纳州格林维尔接受NBC新闻采访时，他谈到了与那些对他在2028年再次参选感到兴奋的人的会面。
“有人走过来对我说，‘我爱你，伙计。这次我要干掉特朗普，下次再干掉你。这不是我想听到的，但在那里我们确实给人留下了印象，这很重要，”他说。
他在其他采访中进行了反思，比如告诉休·休伊特，他在竞选早期远离传统媒体是错误的。
“我应该做好每一件事，”他说，并补充说，“我认为我们有机会走出大门，做这些事，接触更广泛的人群。”
德桑蒂斯上周与福克斯新闻频道的尼尔·卡武托(Neil Cavuto)交谈时表示，尽管选民对非特朗普的共和党人持开放态度，但他们对特朗普“不可避免”的外表感到厌恶
他说:“我确实认为我们在爱荷华州看到的，以及你周二在新罕布什尔州和其他地方可能会看到的是，有很多选民已经辞职，他们是我们的目标，他们对另一种选择感兴趣，但他们确实有点相信必然性的论点。”
私下里，德桑蒂斯正在权衡是否继续前进。在爱荷华州选举结果的阴影下，他不知道如何从这位前总统那里赢得特朗普的支持，并面临一场艰难的筹款斗争。
据一位知情人士透露，上周末，他和他的工作人员聚在一起做决定，这一系列对话最终导致周日暂停了竞选活动。
周六在南卡罗来纳州接受记者采访时，德桑蒂斯显得很疲惫，尽管他确实为自己辩护。
“我认为，很明显，如果你看看这个选区，对我来说这是一个很好的选区。作为唯一的老兵是件大事。这是一个以退伍军人为主的州，一个以军人为主的州，一个保守的州。
在周日结束其竞选活动的视频公告中，德桑蒂斯试图援引温斯顿·丘吉尔的话，丘吉尔以领导英国度过第二次世界大战而闻名。
然而，德桑蒂斯引用的那句话——“成功不是最终的，失败不是致命的:重要的是继续下去的勇气”——似乎从未由丘吉尔说过。
相反，根据国际丘吉尔协会已故总理对赢得艰难的战斗有这样的说法:“没有人能保证战争的成功，但只能得到它。”
Ron DeSantis ends presidential campaign before New Hampshire primary
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was hailed for much of last year as a rising Republican star, is ending hispresidential campaignafter he failed to overtake rival Donald Trump in polling or in the early vote of the 2024 race.
DeSantis made his announcement in a four-and-a-half-minute videoposted to Xon Sunday with less than 48 hours until voting in New Hampshire's primary, the second state in the nominating race.
"We don't have a clear path to victory," he said in the video, which he said was filmed in Florida.
His exit now leaves the primary battle as essentially a one-on-one contest between Trump and Trump's former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who continues to trail Trump in polling and placed a distant third in the Iowa caucuses where DeSantis came in second (with 21%) to Trump's first-place finish with 51%.
Accordingto polls, Haley has her best chance at beating Trump in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
DeSantis on Sunday quickly endorsed Trump, a primary opponent whom he has increasingly criticized on the trail.
"It's clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. ... While I've had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of [COVID-19 adviser] Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear," DeSantis said in his video. "I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honor that pledge."
DeSantis begins 2024 as a failed challenger to Trump, but he entered 2023 as the Republican seen as the most likely alternative to win the party's presidential nomination.
After a dominant reelection to the Florida governor's mansion in November 2022, winning by double digits in a famous swing state that had only barely elected him in 2018, DeSantis was buoyed through March 2023 by poll numbers that showed him less than 15 points behind Trump,according to 538.
DeSantis also often boasted of his track record of conservative victories in his state, where Republicans have increasingly won a number of local elections even as Trump-aligned candidates struggled in high-profile races elsewhere in the country.
Among his achievements in Florida, he said, was his opposition to abortion access, his high-profile resistance to federal health authorities' recommendations during the height of COVID-19 -- which he likened to bureaucratic overreach -- and his view that many K-12 students shouldn't receive public school instruction on LGBTQ issues because it was not age-appropriate.
The latter position, enacted through the Parental Rights in Education Act and widely condemned as prejudiced by LGBTQ advocates, helped solidify DeSantis' national profile as a Republican warrior but sparked a lengthy feud with The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest private employers in Florida. (Disney also owns ABC News.)
Disney sued, claiming DeSantis and his allies retaliated against the company because it spoke out against the Parental Rights in Education Act, which critics call the "Don't Say Gay" law, a label the law's supporters reject.
As the legal battle with Disney wore on, DeSantis, who denied politically motivated retaliation, said the state had "basically moved on." Disney's suit remains pending as are separate, dueling suits between Disney and a new board of DeSantis appointees overseeing the area around the company's theme parks.
In early 2023, before officially entering the presidential race, DeSantis used a new book -- "The Courage to be Free" -- to tout his wins in Florida while teasing that he would launch a White House bid only after "the most productive legislative session" ever seen in his state.
At that point, both Haley and Trump had already been campaigning.
DeSantis' official kickoff in May 2023, hosted by Elon Musk on X, formerly known as Twitter, received a rush of anticipatory coverage but was marred by glitches and soon evolved into a dense, non-televised discussion on policy and culture war issues, the very things also came to define DeSantis' campaign.
His stump speech on the trail was frequently heavy with base-friendly buzz words like "woke" and "indoctrination" and acronyms like "DEI," referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that many conservatives oppose as unnecessarily race-focused.
DeSantis' wife, Casey, a former TV journalist and a trusted adviser, at times joined her husband on the trail, seeking to provide a personal touch that the governor was often said to lack.
But her appearances were brief and eventually the couple spent most days on the opposite ends of Iowa, with Florida's first lady holding her own intimate events with voters while her husband rallied larger groups.
The couple, who share three kids, turned some campaign stops into family affairs, as when they visited the famed "Field of Dreams" baseball diamond in Dyersville, Iowa, in August.
In recent weeks, the DeSantises told voters about their children's first experience with snow, during a December visit to Iowa.
On Sunday, Ron DeSantis looked back on some of those experiences as he thanked staff, supporters and his family for backing his campaign.
During the summer months soon after launching his bid, DeSantis ran an insular operation, keeping his distance from the mainstream press -- just as he often did while running for reelection as governor -- and holding his fire on Trump, the front-runner, only taking Trump on directly when asked by reporters or voters.
The strategy led to some awkward moments, as in New Hampshire in June, when he responded to a voter who asked him about Jan. 6 by saying, "I wasn't anywhere near Washington that day."
In the closing days and weeks of his campaign, DeSantis vocally criticized Trump's record but was unable to build up much momentum in polls of Republican voters.
DeSantis also repeatedly endured cycles of negative headlines over staffing layoffs; infighting with his allied super PAC, which organized much of his campaigning; and his high rate of spending that saw him burn through a significant amount of his huge fundraising.
By the time the governor appeared to find his footing on the trail in the fall, his earlier strength in the polls had badly eroded and he was hearing Haley's footsteps.
The former South Carolina governor delivered multiple well-received debate performances in the summer and fall and saw a steady uptick in the polls, even surpassing DeSantis in many surveys by the winter months as both sought to pitch themselves as the stronger Trump alternative.
DeSantis, responding to Haley's rise, labeled her as less conservative -- needing to prop up her campaign with anti-Trump voters outside the GOP base.
Haley on Sunday responded to the end of DeSantis' campaign by praising him.
"I want to say to Ron: He ran a great race, he's been a good governor and we wish him well," she said.
"Having said that," she added, "it's now one fella and one lady left. ... May the best woman win."
The Trump campaign, in their own statement, said they were "honored" to have DeSantis' endorsement. "It is now time for all Republicans to rally behind President Trump to defeat Crooked Joe Biden and end his disastrous presidency," the campaign said.
Trump told reporters later Sunday that his preferred nickname to mock DeSantis -- DeSanctimonious -- was "officially retired."
An intense campaign schedule, and a bet on Iowa
DeSantis pitched himself to voters as the hardest-working candidate and often had the receipts to prove it.
In late summer, he began campaigning intensely across Iowa, which held the first contest of the nominating race, by ticking off counties big and small as he sought to visit all 99 by the time of January's caucuses (he accomplished the feat by early December).
The tours through Iowa were led primarily by Never Back Down, the deep-pocketed super PAC supporting the governor.
Staff from the group guided DeSantis through each crevice of the state in a red-and-blue bus with his name stamped on each side.
The stops ranged from meeting the owners of a meat locker in rural Wright County, near the Minnesota border, to rallying in front of hundreds of supporters near the banks of the Mississippi River.
Along the way, DeSantis consistently chided Trump for not exerting the same effort, accusing the former president of taking voters for granted.
The governor's problem, though, was that many voters didn't seem to care. The more DeSantis campaigned, the more his numbers weakened -- a pattern, according to 538, that suggests DeSantis' approach was turning off more voters than he was winning over.
By the end of the fall, DeSantis' best chance at the nomination had shrunk to one clear, if distant, scenario: notch a stellar result in Iowa's caucuses in January, where evangelical Republicans were seen as more aligned with his deep social conservatism, and hope that it would shatter Trump's aura of invincibility.
With the backing of the state's popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and a prominent evangelical leader, Bob Vander Plaats, DeSantis sounded confident in his chances -- for a while, at least.
Several times, he pledged to win the state, even as recently as December.
An underwhelming caucus night
Not only did he not win the caucuses, DeSantis finished 30 points behind Trump and only just ahead of Haley, who had devoted much less attention to the state.
"Donald Trump posted the victory [in Iowa], so I think he's benefiting from momentum here," DeSantis acknowledged in a Fox News interview on Friday from New Hampshire, where his polling significantly trailed Haley.
To keep his campaign busy, DeSantis and his aides said after Iowa that instead he would spend more time in South Carolina -- insisting publicly that he could undercut Haley in her home state by the time of the Feb. 24 Republican primary and push her out of the race.
DeSantis was in South Carolina for three events on Saturday. It was his final full day of campaigning.
'Next time'
In his final few days on the trail, DeSantis appeared resigned to the fate of his 2024 bid.
Speaking to NBC News on Tuesday in Greenville, South Carolina, he spoke of meeting people who were excited about the prospect of him running again in 2028.
"I had people come up to me saying, 'I love you, man. I'm going to do Trump this time and you next time.' That's not what I wanted to hear, but being there we did make an impression and it's important," he said.
He was reflective in other interviews, telling Hugh Hewitt, for example, that he erred by staying away from traditional media early on in his campaign.
"I should have gone on everything," he said, adding, "We had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader folk."
Speaking with Fox News' Neil Cavuto last week, DeSantis said voters who were open to a non-Trump Republican had nonetheless been turned off by the appearance of his "inevitability."
"What I do think we saw in Iowa, and what you're probably going to see on Tuesday in New Hampshire and beyond, is there are a lot of voters that were resigned, that we were targeting, that were interested in another choice but they did kind of buy into the inevitability argument," he said.
Privately, DeSantis was weighing whether to continue forward. In the shadow of the Iowa result, he was at a loss for how to pull Trump's base from the former president and faced an uphill battle to fundraise.
Over the weekend, he and his staff huddled to make decisions, a set of conversations that led eventually to suspending the campaign on Sunday, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday in South Carolina, DeSantis appeared tired, though he did make a case for himself.
"I think, clearly, if you look at this constituency, this is a great constituency for me. Being the only veteran is huge. It's a veteran-heavy state, military-heavy state, a conservative state," he said.
In closing his video announcement about the end of his campaign on Sunday, DeSantis sought to invoke Winston Churchill, who famously led the U.K. through World War II.
However, the quote DeSantis cited -- "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" -- appears never to have been spoken by Churchill.
Instead, according to theInternational Churchill Society, the late prime minister had this to say about winning tough battles: "No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it."
