Republican Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, has decided to drop out of the 2012 US presidential race.
His decision came a day after he finished a distant third in the Iowa straw poll, an early test of strength for the candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination to face President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.
Some experts had expected Mr Pawlenty to be a formidable candidate in the Republican field, but his campaign failed to gain traction in the early stages of the race.
Mr Pawlenty was on John McCain's short list to be the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008. He was a popular two-term governor in a Midwestern state.
He made a big effort to demonstrate the strength of his candidacy in the Iowa straw poll, but came up short.
In the poll, Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, won with 29% of the vote. Ron Paul, a US congressman from Texas, was a close second with 28% and Mr Pawlenty had 14%.
‘This is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012,’ Ms Bachmann told a small crowd of supporters outside her campaign bus. ‘Now it's on to all 50 states.’
In South Carolina, Texas Governor Rick Perry formally jumped into the race with a blistering attack on President Barack Obama.
‘We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership,’ he told a conference of conservatives, promising to reduce taxes, regulations and government intrusion in people's lives.
The straw poll and Mr Perry's campaign launch, coming less than six months before Iowa's nominating contest, promised to reshuffle the Republican field fighting for the nomination to challenge Mr Obama in 2012.
Mr Perry, a staunch social conservative with a strong job creation record in Texas, is expected to immediately vault into the top tier of contenders along with front-runner Mitt Romney. Mr Perry visits Iowa today.
Ms Bachmann's win adds to her recent momentum and cements her standing in the top tier of contenders. She had shot to the top of opinion polls in Iowa this summer with the support of social conservatives and the fiscal conservative Tea Party movement.
Mr Perry finished sixth with 3.6% of the vote even though he was not on the ballot. That was more than Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who was on the ballot but did not participate in the poll. He finished seventh.
Six Republicans had paid to erect tents and speak at the event, pleading for support from voters who rolled into the site in dozens of buses and jammed candidate tents for music and free barbecue.
