Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum announces he will be suspending his campaign during a press conference at the Gettysburg Hotel on April 10, 2012 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (AFP Photo / Jeff Swensen)
Rick Santorum, the one-time Republican Party frontrunner in the 2012 presidential election, has officially suspended his campaign.
Santorum addressed a crowd Tuesday afternoon from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he formally announced that he would be retiring his quest to seek the GOP’s nomination this election year. He had announced that he would be seeking the Republican Party’s nod last June.
“We made a decision over the weekend that, this presidential race is over for me and we will suspend our campaign effective today,” Santorum told an audience at around 2:30 p.m. local time Tuesday afternoon.
This past February, polling data from RealClearPolitics had put Santorum in the lead among Republican Party candidates. In recent weeks, however, the former Pennsylvania senator has slumped in popularity as former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney surged in the polls.
“At a time when we were told over and over again, forget it, you can’t win, we were winning,” explained Santorum, who added that, “this race was as improbable as any race you’d ever see for president.”
Despite suspending his campaign on Tuesday, Santorum insisted “We are not done fighting” and said that he will “continue to fight for those Americans that gave us the air under our wings that were able to let us accomplish those things that no political expert ever would have expected.” Senator Santorum also singled out the issues “of a sluggish economy” and “violent, radical Islam” as problems he feels still plague America.
Santorum did not offer an endorsement for other Republican Party candidate, but did say he would seek to ensure that current US President Barack Obama will not be reelected.