The Republican Party’s 2024 presidential field shrank a bit following the first debate of the GOP primary season, and it could change again after the second debate next week.
The upcoming debate is not expected to feature the primary’s front-runner, as former President Donald Trump is planning to skip it and stage counter-programming, as he did last month.
See: Trump plans to meet with striking autoworkers instead of attending second GOP debate
Trump continues to command a huge lead in polls of GOP primary voters, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a distant second.
The 2024 Republican presidential field stands at 11 relatively well-known contenders. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez bowed out following the first debate after not qualifying for it.
Below is MarketWatch’s list of Republican presidential contenders and the status of their candidacies.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said he won’t be on the presidential campaign trail in 2023 because of elections for his state’s legislature in November, but he appears to have left the door open for a 2024 White House run.
In addition to the relatively high-profile names on the list above, there are some lesser-known GOP presidential hopefuls as well, such as Aaron Day, who is known in part for his 2016 run against former Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, a fellow Republican; Perry Johnson, a former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan; Steve Laffey, a former mayor of Cranston, R.I.; and former Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton.
The second GOP debate is scheduled to take place Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. The Republican Party has raised the qualification bar for that event.
Trump grabbed the spotlight throughout the summer thanks to his widely followed indictments in Washington, D.C., and Georgia’s Fulton County in election-interference cases tied to his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential race. He has denied wrongdoing and argued the charges are politically motivated, as he did with his spring indictments in a hush-money case and a classified-documents case.
Related: Trump’s PAC has spent $40 million on legal fees so far this year
And see: How DeSantis is leading Trump in cash on hand, even as the former president dominates in polls
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden officially launched his re-election campaign in April.
Democrats are largely closing ranks behind Biden, although author and activist Marianne Williamson has said she’s seeking the party’s nomination again and vigorously defended her decision to challenge the president in an extensive question-and-answer session with MarketWatch. Antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also mounting a long-shot challenge to Biden, and Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota has said he’s being urged to consider a White House run.
Among third-party candidacies, Cornel West, a former Ivy League professor now at Union Theological Seminary, has announced that he’s a presidential candidate for the People’s Party and that he’s seeking the Green Party’s nomination. In addition, a group called No Labels has been considering a “unity ticket” for 2024, saying that a rematch between Biden and Trump would be “the sequel that no one asked for,” but a Politico report said the group would not submit a third-party challenger if DeSantis becomes the Republican nominee.
Now read: Nikki Haley says ‘no Republican president will have the ability to ban abortion nationwide’
Plus: Biden’s age is figuring ‘prominently’ in the 2024 White House race — but here’s what the pundits could be getting wrong
And from MarketWatch’s archives (September 2022): In a conversation with MarketWatch, Vivek Ramaswamy says companies should ‘leave politics to the politicians’
Robert Schroeder contributed.
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