Steve Laffey, the former mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, has announced his withdrawal from the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. Laffey, who had declared his candidacy in February, expressed his disappointment in a recent interview with ABC News.
“I love being on the trail. I love meeting people,” he said. “I am crestfallen that I wasn’t able to cross the chasm.”
Despite his enthusiasm for the campaign trail, Laffey struggled to make a significant impact in national polls. He attributed his lack of visibility to his relatively low name recognition, which hindered his chances of qualifying for the debate stage.
Beyond financial constraints, Laffey has expressed a profound disillusionment with the Republican Party’s current direction. “I don’t have an avenue to tell people with a straight face, ‘It’s now October — how do I take off and take New Hampshire and keep going?’”
“But at the same time, I’m telling people the GOP is dead,” he remarked.
Best known for his tenure as the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, from 2003 to 2007, Laffey has before sought a higher political office. In 2006, he ran in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Rhode Island but was defeated by