Rick Perry pulls out of Republican Presidential candidate race

Former Governor of Texas failed to poll strongly enough to appear on the main stage at the party’s first presidential debate last month

Rick Perry briefly led the presidential polls in 2012 (Getty)

Rick Perry, the former Governor of Texas, has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr Perry, who briefly led the polls during his previous presidential campaign in 2012, had failed to make an impact on a broad 2016 field dominated by colourful outsiders such as Donald Trump, and filled out by establishment favourites including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin.

Mr Perry, who led the Lone Star state from 2000 to 2015, announced on Friday that he would suspend his campaign. “We have a tremendous field – the best in a generation – so I step aside knowing our party is in good hands,” he told the audience at an event in St Louis. Mr Perry is the first Republican to exit the race, narrowing the GOP field to 16 candidates.

He had failed to poll strongly enough to appear on the main stage at the party’s first presidential debate last month, and did not make the cut for the second debate, due to take place at the Reagan Library in California next Wednesday, 16 September. It is almost a month since the Perry campaign announced it would cease to pay its staff, and days since the campaign’s headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina, was closed. Mr Perry cited deep financial difficulties for his decision to pull out.

The then-Governor’s first White House bid came undone during a television debate in 2011, when he was unable to identify the third of three federal agencies that he had pledged to abolish should he win the presidency.