Trump Handed a Major Win in Florida
The Republican Party of Florida voted Friday against requiring candidates running in the state’s presidential primary to pledge to support the eventual nominee.
The decision is seen as a victory for former President Donald Trump, who has refused to take a similar pledge required for candidates to participate in national GOP debates. The state party had just instituted the pledge requirement in May.
Since then, Trump has maintained dominance over the Republican field while Florida Gov. DeSantis, his chief rival, has faltered and had to lay off staffers.
The oath requirement would have forced primary candidates to back the eventual nominee in order to get on the ballot. Had Trump been excluded from the primary ballot, he might not have been able to run on the Republican line in the November general election.
Former state GOP chairman and state Sen. Joe Gruters asked that the requirement be removed during a party meeting on Friday. Gruters is a longtime Trump supporter and is one of the few Republican Florida lawmakers to back the former president over DeSantis.
“By putting this in place, whether it was intentional or not, the party looks like it was favoring a certain candidate,” Gruters said. “This has turned into a proxy battle — the Trump world versus the DeSantis world.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the vote, but members of Trump’s campaign team shared posts on X, the site formally known as Twitter, written by others that cast the vote as a win for Trump.
“When people say, ‘Well, Trump doesn’t want to sign the loyalty oath,’ it’s not about that. It’s about the party putting up artificial roadblocks that didn’t exist four months ago,” Gruters said.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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