Republican candidate pulls out of presidential debate scheduled for Thursday and tells supporters he will discuss his future further in a speech on Friday

Ben Carson has told supporters he “does not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results” and that he is dropping out of a presidential debate scheduled for Thursday in Detroit.

Carson’s future participation in the 2016 race for the White House was unclear. The retired neurosurgeon has not suspended his campaign.



“I will discuss more about the future of this movement during my speech on Friday at CPAC,” Carson, 64, said in a statement, referring to the conservative political action conference convening at the weekend outside Washington DC.

“I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America,” Carson’s statement said. “This grassroots movement on behalf of ‘We the People’ will continue.”

Carson finished last or second-to-last in all 11 states to host Republican voting in Tuesday’s Super Tuesday contests. He had amassed only eight delegates out of hundreds to be awarded so far in the GOP nominating competition.

Despite his poor performance in the polls, Carson had projected determination to stay in the race as late as Tuesday night, when he sent a message to supporters saying that millions of them had convinced him to stay on.

“As long we continue to receive their support, and the Lord keeps opening doors, I will remain in this presidential race.”

The soft-spoken pediatric neurosurgeon had parlayed his inspiring biography and deep enmity for the Obama administration into a presidential campaign that at one point overtook Donald Trump’s lead in the polls.

Carson’s decision follows a disappointing finish in the Super Tuesday primaries, weeks after he finished last place in the South Carolina primary and the Nevada caucus. If he quits the race it will be a disappointing conclusion to a campaign that saw the retired surgeon reach the top position in national polls in November.

But when terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, shifted voter focus to foreign policy and national security, Carson stumbled numerous times on issues relating to terrorism, Islamic State and international relations. The experience gap was highlighted after his top adviser conceded that the candidate was on a “learning curve” when it came to foreign policy.

Carson’s campaign never recovered, even among evangelicals in South Carolina.



The campaign also suffered from internal issues, with unusual personnel churn and an unusually high cash “burn rate.” The operation was criticized for channeling a majority of money raised from small donors – Carson raised $22.6m in the fourth quarter of 2015 – to the pockets of large marketing firms whose supposed work failed to make an impact in the polls.

Carson gained national prominence in 2013 when, as the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast, he savaged the president’s signature healthcare law only feet away from where the president was seated.

Citing his expertise as a world-renowned surgeon – Carson was the first person to successfully separate conjoined twins attached at the skull – the candidate told the Value Voters Summit that “Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing to happen to the nation since slavery. And it is slavery, in a way.”

That would not be the final controversial remark of Carson’s tenure in the public eye. During a Meet the Press interview in September with Chuck Todd, who asked Carson whether he believed “Islam is consistent with the constitution”, Carson said: “No, I don’t, I do not. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

This statement and others like it often endeared him to a certain slice of the electorate, but according to voters in South Carolina, his sincere social conservatism and evangelical faith was not enough to mitigate his lack of authority on foreign policy.

“I wanted to vote for him, but my main issue with him was foreign policy,” Debbie Nogueira, a middle school Spanish teacher in Greenville, South Carolina, told the Guardian. While his stances on poverty and abortion were convincing, Nogueira said, “on national security, he just wasn’t the strongest”. Nogueira voted for Texas senator Ted Cruz.