Following a stinging loss in his home state of Florida, Marco Rubio announced during a concession speech tonight that he is suspending his presidential campaign. There is no indication if or when Rubio will endorse an opponent, but his exit leaves the race down to just three contenders on the GOP side.
Report from New York Post:
Republican Marco Rubio is ending his campaign for the Republican nomination for president after a humiliating loss in his home state of Florida.
Rubio told a crowd in Miami Tuesday that he knows that voters are angry and that there is a hunger for new faces and voices in government.
Rubio’s decision was prompted by losses in all but three of the presidential nomination contests but Florida’s winner-take-all primary proved the most devastating. Only six years earlier, he was a tea party favorite who crushed the GOP’s “establishment” candidate to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.
But the political tables turned on the Florida senator as a 2016 presidential candidate who was lambasted as mainstream in a year when voters cried out for an outsider.
Here is Rubio’s speech from just after 8pm ET this evening after Florida was called for Trump:
Rubio lost Florida by a sizable margin and had no path moving forward to the nomination. There was speculation that he would stay in the race and attempt to deny Donald Trump the delegates needed to secure the nomination, but perhaps he changed his mind on that front.
As it stands, we’re down to just Trump, Cruz, and Kasich left in the GOP field.
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