Ben Carson, who recently ended his White House bid, is declining to endorse any candidate for the Republican nomination, though he says he has “talked to all of them this week”.
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Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Carson received a standing ovation when he announced that he would be leaving the campaign trail. “I will still continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation”.
Carson plans on joining the non-partisan group My Faith Votes as its chair to devote himself to turn out Christians in the November elections.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who had a brief surge in opinion surveys past year but has failed to bring in votes, did not participate in the last two Republican debates.
Earlier in the week, he said he did not see a political path forward for his campaign.
In his speech on Friday, Dr Carson also sounded his usual notes of preserving evangelical Christian values and embracing personal responsibility.
Carson said he made a decision to drop out after he looked at the current delegate count, “did the math” and “simply realized it wasn’t going to happen”. “And if that’s the case, then I simply didn’t want to interfere with the process”, he explained.
His campaign suspension comes after winning eight out of 688 Republican delegates during the Super Tuesday primaries on March 1.
Carson, the only African-American candidate in the GOP field, had risen to fame after a viral 2013 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that criticized Obama, who was just feet away from him.
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Tuesday’s 11 primaries and caucuses brought no glimmers of hope for Carson, whose campaign has struggled mightily after peaking last fall.
