Rick Santorum narrowly won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, but only claimed 1 percent of the vote in Monday’s contest | AP Photo Santorum drops out, endorses Rubio 'He is the new generation,' Santorum says about the Florida senator.

Rick Santorum on Wednesday dropped out of the Republican primary race, and immediately threw his support behind Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“We are suspending our campaign,” Santorum said on Fox News’ “On the Record,” explaining that his family and allies decided their time is better served being advocates for someone better positioned to win the White House.


That person, Santorum said, is Rubio. “I don't endorse lightly,” the former Pennsylvania senator said, calling Rubio a “tremendously gifted young man” who not only understands the importance of family but also has the fortitude and smarts to face the threat of Islamic State.

“He is the new generation,” Santorum said.

So thankful & grateful for your support. Just not our year. So today please join me in supporting @marcorubio pic.twitter.com/VhgHo9trNp — Rick Santorum (@RickSantorum) February 4, 2016

He was the second GOP candidate to drop out on Wednesday — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul also declared that he was suspending his presidential bid, saying he would instead focus on his Senate reelection.

Santorum’s announcement ends a 2016 run that never matched the strength or enthusiasm of his previous bid for the nomination in 2012, when he finished second. His campaign suffered from weak fundraising and similarly feeble poll numbers.

Santorum never found himself averaging at or above 5 percent nationally. As a result, the former Pennsylvania senator never secured a spot on the main stage of any of the Republican presidential debates.

Santorum shrugged all this off, saying that his moment would come and urging voters to focus on his policy positions. He regularly boasted of being featured in Islamic State propaganda, suggesting the terrorist group was afraid of a Santorum presidency.

“The only person that’s been listed in ISIS magazine as an enemy of ISIS is me. And you know why they listed me? If you go back and read the article that was in the April edition of ISIS magazine online, it wasn’t because I was criticizing or taking on the Muslim religion, or I was pontificating on what we need to do to make Muslims like us,” Santorum said in December in an interview with Breitbart News Radio. “The reason I was identified as an enemy was because I identified who they are.”

The bluster did not translate into real votes. Santorum, who had narrowly won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, claimed only 1 percent of the vote in last Monday’s contest.

Santorum’s campaign struggled internally, too. At the start of the cycle, key members of his 2012 presidential campaign opted to go to other teams. That included Alice Stewart and J. Hogan Gidley, who joined former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. Both were top 2012 Santorum campaign press operatives. Michael Biundo, Santorum’s 2012 campaign manager, became the chief New England strategist for Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign.

It got worse in the late summer of 2015, when multiple top staffers left Santorum’s campaign to start a pro-Santorum super PAC. Campaign manager Terry Allen, Santorum campaign Iowa coordinator Jon Jones and Allen’s son-in-law, Steve Hilliard, who had been the campaign’s digital strategist, all jumped ship. Those departures came when it was clear Santorum was having a money problem.

“There’s no campaign that ever has enough money, that’s just the nature of campaigns,” Allen said at the time. “But my decision to leave was because this is the most efficient and effective way to help the senator, and it became very obvious, and you see more campaigns figuring it out.”

Regulatory filings released last Sunday that Santorum ended the year with a paltry sum in his bank account — just $42,919.