Asa Hutchinson ends 2024 presidential campaign

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday dropped his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination after finishing sixth in the Iowa caucus.

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With nearly 99% of the estimated vote counted, Hutchinson was in sixth place in the Iowa caucus with 191 votes, according to the Des Moines Register.

The tally put him far behind front-runner Donald Trump, who got more than 56,000 votes. Ryan Binkley, a Texas businessman and pastor who did not appear in any of the televised Republican debates, placed above Hutchinson with about 775 votes, the Register reported.

In a statement released Tuesday, Hutchinson congratulated Trump and others who ran in Iowa.

“Today, I am suspending my campaign for President and driving back to Arkansas,” he said. “My message of being a principled Republican with experience and telling the truth about the current front runner did not sell in Iowa.”

Hutchinson was considered a long-shot candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, registering just a single percentage point in most polls, according to The Associated Press.

He was one of few candidates in the race willing to openly criticize Trump, according to Bloomberg News. In November, he was booed during a gathering of Florida Republicans after saying that he thought there was “a significant likelihood” that Trump — who is facing criminal charges in New York, Georgia, Florida and Washington, D.C. — would be convicted of a crime, The Washington Post reported.

His exit follows that of biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who dropped his bid for the nomination after finishing fourth in Iowa.

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