Huntsman to Drop Out of GOP Race; Will Endorse Romney

By Jon E. Dougherty at 16 Jan 2012

(Newsroom America) -- Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman plans to drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Monday and will endorse Mitt Romney instead, reports said.

ABC News said sources close to his campaign said he was "proud of the race that he ran," but "did not want to stand in the way" of Romney, the party's current frontrunner.

CNN also reported that Huntsman would throw his support behind Romney.

Huntsman had disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, the latter contest on which he staked his campaign. After finishing third in the Granite State, however, initially Huntsman vowed to fight on into at least the South Carolina primary.

An aide to the campaign told ABC News the candidate had been mulling the decision to fight on or drop out early.

"He has been discussing with his family after they woke up after a successful evening in New Hampshire. They felt good about their performance in New Hampshire, but he and his family had a discussion and this is the decision they came to," the aide was quoted by ABC News as saying.

"At the end of the day he decided he did not want to hurt the best chance of beating Barack Obama and that’s Mitt Romney. By continuing into South Carolina and Florida, that’s what he would have been doing," the aide said.

News that Huntsman will drop out comes on the same day that the state's largest newspaper endorsed him.

"Mr. Huntsman is a true conservative, with a record and platform of bold economic reform straight out of the free-market bible, but he’s a realist, whose goal is likewise to get things done," the paper said, touting his record as governor and as a diplomat for both Bush and Obama.

"Under his leadership, Utah led the nation in job creation, and the Pew Center on the States ranked it the best-managed state in the nation," the paper said.

Huntsman is the fourth GOP candidate to drop out of the race, behind Tim Pawlenty, who left last summer after a poor showing in the Iowa straw poll; Michele Bachman following the Iowa caucus, and Herman Cain, who left earlier this fall amid a storm of sexual misconduct allegations.

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