Pawlenty Drops 2012 Presidential Bid

Reporting from Portsmouth, N.H. and Ames, Ia.— After finishing a distant third place in the crucial Ames Straw Poll, Tim Pawlenty withdrew from the presidential race Sunday, telling supporters and friends that after much prayer with his wife, he did not see a pathway forward.


Pawlenty, who announced his decision to donors and supporters on a conference call this morning, had centered his campaign on his neighboring state of Iowa, hoping that his credentials as social and fiscal conservative would give him broad appeal to first-in-the-nation caucus goers.


But the laid-back, amiable governor failed to catch on in the polls, even after building a widely-admired staff and touring Iowa for weeks in a modest RV with a grueling schedule. Though Pawlenty drew strong crowds at some of his events, voters often left undecided. And the surge for Michele Bachmann, a Congresswoman from his home state, combined with the formidable entry of Texas Gov. Rick Perry Saturday proved to be too much to withstand, despite the more than $1 million he spent organizing for it.


The message Pawlenty was offering "didn't get the kind of traction or lift that we needed and hoped for coming into the and out of the Ames straw poll. We needed to get some lift to continue on and to have a pathway forward. That didn't happen," he said.
"Obviously, we had some success raising money, but we needed to continue that, and Ames was a benchmark for that. And if we didn't do well in Ames, we weren't going to have the fuel to keep the car going down the road," he added.
Pawlenty received 13 percent of the vote in the Saturday poll, which is not generally a marker of the future presidential nominee. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann received 28 percent of the nearly 17,000 votes cast followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who earned 27 percent. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum earned 9 percent and businessman Herman Cain received 8 percent.
But Pawlenty, who had relied on organizational strength and popularity in the lead-off caucuses state, has struggled to gain traction in Iowa, where he and Bachmann, who was born in the state, have conducted a surly back-and-forth.
After his third-place finish, Pawlenty issued a statement saying that he merely needed to show progress, and had achieved that goal.
"We are now moving onto the next phase of our campaign. Over the coming weeks we will be visiting New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida while continuing to grow our already strong ground game in Iowa," Pawlenty said.
But a senior adviser told Fox News that during a Sunday morning conference call, Pawlenty told supporters, "We cannot envision a path forward to victory and so therefore, we made a decision to end the campaign.