Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has dismissed Vivek Ramaswamy’s call to withdraw from Colorado’s GOP primary ballot after former President Donald Trump was barred.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s competing for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said that he will not heed fellow presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy’s call to withdraw from the primary ballot in Colorado after the state’s supreme court ruled to bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot.
Mr. Ramaswamy condemned the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4–3 ruling, which makes President Trump the first candidate in U.S. history to be deemed ineligible to make a White House bid, and vowed to withdraw from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado.
“I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately—or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on X on Dec. 19.
Mr. DeSantis addressed Mr. Ramaswamy’s call for him to withdraw from the Colorado primary ballot during a Wednesday interview on Newsmax. The Florida Republican said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the Colorado Supreme Court decision, which he called “political.”
He then rejected Mr. Ramaswamy’s call to withdraw from the ballot, saying, “I think that’s just playing into the left.”
“I’ve qualified for all the ballots. I’m competing in all the states, and I’m going to accumulate the delegates necessary. That’s the whole name of the game in this situation,” Mr. DeSantis said.
President Trump’s attorneys have said they would appeal the Colorado court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, while his legal spokesperson, Alina Habba, said in a statement that she believes the ruling “will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”
The Ruling
The Colorado Supreme Court’s Dec. 19 ruling centered on a section of the 14th Amendment that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.
