Mitt Romney has clinched the Republican presidential nomination in the United States with a resounding victory in the Texas primary.
He now has five months to convince voters to trust him over Democratic President Barack Obama in November's election.
Although the race has been essentially over for weeks, Mr Romney finally cleared the necessary benchmark of 1,144 delegates for becoming the Republican Party's presidential candidate after a long primary battle.
The former Governor of Massachusetts will be formally nominated at the Republicans' national convention in Florida in late August.
He will become the first Mormon White House nominee.
"Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three-and-a-half years behind us," Mr Romney said in a statement.
"I have no illusions about the difficulties of the task before us. But whatever challenges lie ahead, we will settle for nothing less than getting America back on the path to full employment and prosperity," he said.
In the immediate weeks ahead, his goal is to bolster his case that Mr Obama has been ineffective in handling the sluggish US economy and is hostile to job creators.
This argument will move soon to the energy industry, which Mr Romney thinks Mr Obama has bungled by not ramping up domestic production of oil and natural gas.
Mr Romney will also turn to Obama's 2010 healthcare overhaul. The US Supreme Court is to decide in late June on the constitutionality of the law's requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance.
Mr Romney has vowed to repeal the law if elected, citing it as an example of too much government under Mr Obama.
The Republican, while popular with white men and military veterans, has work to do to try to bolster his popularity among women and Hispanics - two key voting blocs.
