US Republican Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.
He had hoped to become the first African-American to secure the Republican nomination.
He told Fox News: “I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now, Tim.'”
Although Tim Scott was very well funded, he failed to make an appreciable impact in opinion polls.
He has not endorsed any of the remaining candidates and he ruled out running for vice-president.
“I’ll be honest with you: I ran for president to be president,” he told Fox host and personal friend Trey Gowdy in the interview on Sunday, saying being vice-president was not on his “to-do list”.
Having entered the race in May for the Republican nomination, Mr Scott, 58, presented himself as a deeply conservative candidate who could do a better job of healing US political divisions than former US President Donald Trump.
He ran on a mostly positive message, promising to revive the US’s “culture of greatness”, and touted his personal story as an embodiment of the American dream.
The grandson of a Deep South cotton field worker, he spoke of being raised by a single mother and of how his family had risen “from cotton to Congress” in his grandfather’s lifetime.
His decision to withdraw from the Republican presidential campaign came shortly after the third presidential debate last week in Miami.
Mr Scott was often overshadowed on the debate stage by other candidates and his optimistic campaign message failed to catch on with voters – he faced the possibility of not qualifying for the next Republican debate on 6 December.
Mr Trump, the frontrunner in the race with a commanding lead over his Republican rivals, has not participated in the televised debates.
Mr Scott’s decision to suspend his campaign came as a surprise to a number of his staff, according to the BBC’s US media partner CBS.
