Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson on Friday announced he is suspending his long-shot bid for the White House in 2024, blasting “corruption” in the Republican National Committee (RNC) after he didn’t make the party’s debate stage.
“With no opportunity to share my vision on the debate stage, I have decided at this time, suspending my campaign is the right thing to do,” Johnson said in a statement shared on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.
The Michigan businessman has been vocal about his dissatisfaction with the RNC over not getting on the party’s debate stage, and said in his announcement that “the corruption among leaders at the RNC during this process was appalling.”
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the people should decide the next president of the United States, not the head of the RNC and her cronies,” he added, an apparent reference to RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.
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Johnson launched his campaign back in March, but struggled to break through in national polling. FiveThirtyEight’s tracker of the GOP presidential field doesn’t consider Johnson a major candidate, and Morning Consult has also left him off their tracker of the contest.
Johnson and fellow White House hopeful Larry Elder announced plans in August to sue the RNC for not allowing them on the RNC’s first debate stage. The RNC raised the polling and donor requirements for the second debate in September, and the pair again didn’t make the cut.
“Not only was the debate process set up to keep outsiders off the stage and without a voice, but when we did meet their arbitrary metrics, corrupt leaders used their authoritarian power to kick me off the stage at 11 p.m. the Monday before the debate, despite our team working with Fox News all weekend on logistics,” Johnson claimed in his Friday statement.
He lost a bid to get on the primary ballot in Michigan’s gubernatorial race last year after a court ruled he used fraudulent signatures to get into the race.
A release notes Johnson is suspending his campaign rather than withdrawing, and will still be on the ballot in some early contests. He also plans to keep “a small political team on staff in the event the dynamics of the race change.”