Former US Vice President Mike Pence withdraws from presidential race

Former US Vice President Mike Pence has announced the suspension of his campaign for president amid financial challenges and lagging poll numbers. He has vowed to help elect "principled Republican leaders" moving forward, CNN reported.

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

He 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," according to CNN report.

The decision to suspend the campaign for president was kept a close hold among advisors, CNN reported citing multiple sources. Many event planners did not know that the announcement would be made on stage.

Earlier in June, Pence announced that he was running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Before becoming US Vice President, he served as Indiana governor and a US congressman. He launched his bid in Iowa instead of his home state of Indiana, which indicates how much importance he was placing on the early-voting state.

Mike Pence vowed to visit all of Iowa's 99 counties, with a focus on face-to-face interactions in intimate settings. He participated in the first two GOP primary presidential debates, CNN reported.

He met the polling qualifications to participate in the debate. However, he faced challenges in meeting the individual donor threshold set by the Republican National Committee. More signs of trouble came in October when Pence filed for the state-run Nevada presidential primary instead of a party-run caucuses, which have a filing fee of USD 55,000.

The move made Pence ineligible for Nevada's allocation of delegates to the GOP's convention in 2024. His campaign also reported USD 620,000 in debt in the third fundraising quarter, according to CNN report.

He had served as US Vice President to Trump and this time he was competing against him for the GOP nomination. In 2021, Pence had a different view from Trump as he refused to reject electoral votes during Congress' certification of the 2020 election.

While speaking to CNN in August this year, "What I want the American people to know is that President Trump was wrong then and he's wrong now that I had no right to overturn the election. I had no right to reject or return votes, and that, by God's grace, I did my duty under the Constitution of the United States.