Rand Paul won’t endorse a candidate in the 2016 Republican primary, his campaign said in a conference call discussing his decision to suspend his campaign Wednesday.
Senior adviser Doug Stafford said that Paul decided to drop out of the presidential race in the “last 24 hours.”
“He flew back from Iowa and thought about it and decided it was the right time to do that,” Stafford said. Aides on the call emphasized that Paul ran ahead of all the current and former governors running in the caucuses, with Stafford saying “he did well in Iowa, which was encouraging, but not good enough a job to win” the nomination.
Paul aides said “larger than life” Donald Trump changed the trajectory of the race and they were never able to get back on track. “The outsized attention given to one outsider candidate really prevented him from spreading his message more than we anticipated,” Stafford said.
They acknowledged they didn’t know where all the Ron Paul voters went, saying some likely caucused for other Republicans and a few motivated solely by foreign policy might have gone over to the Democrats, presumably Bernie Sanders.
Both Ron and Rand Paul had endorsed Ted Cruz, one of the remaining candidates for the Republican nomination and the Iowa winner, in the GOP primary for Senate in Texas in 2012. Asked why the Kentucky senator won’t be endorsing Cruz again, Stafford replied, “[Paul] has endorsed a lot of people for Senate … I’m sure he’d endorse them for Senate again.”
Paul is running for re-election to the U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Stafford noted that he made the vast majority of his Senate votes during the presidential campaign, saying, “We think Sen. Paul did the right thing doing his job while campaigning.” Other candidates have been criticized for missing Senate votes while running for president.
