AUGUSTA, Maine — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis became Tuesday the latest Republican presidential candidate to submit signatures to qualify for Maine’s 2024 primary.
DeSantis is the fourth 2024 candidate to submit at least 2,000 signatures required to appear in Maine, with campaign representatives and volunteers turning in the paperwork Tuesday morning to the Maine Secretary of State’s office in Augusta.
Former President Donald Trump, who continues to comfortably lead the GOP field in polls, was the first to submit signatures earlier in November. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat making a longshot bid to defeat President Joe Biden in the primary, filed after Trump, according to a spokesperson for Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
Maine joins more than a dozen other states in having primary elections on March 5, 2024, or Super Tuesday. Trump’s pending criminal cases have not hampered him in terms of GOP popularity, with DeSantis following far behind in second in most national polls.
Haley, who served under Trump as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and garnered an endorsement Tuesday from billionaire Charles Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Action, has polled better than DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two of the early primary states.
DeSantis will be in the national spotlight Thursday when he debates California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, on Fox News in a made-for-TV event between two state leaders viewed as political opposites.
DeSantis’ Maine campaign team includes Josh Tardy, a lobbyist and former legislative leader who chaired Trump’s 2016 run in Maine, along with Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, and Rep. Reagan Paul, R-Winterport.
“It’s DeSantis’ vision to reverse America’s decline, stop the invasion at our southern border and restore the American dream for the middle class that will resonate on the ground here in Maine,” Paul said Tuesday.