Mary Whitfill
Features Editor
Rick Perry, 11 year Texas Gov. is expected to leave the race for the GOP nomination on Thursday, two days before the South Carolina primary. Perry will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. central time.
Perry almost quit the race after his embarrassing 5th place finish in Iowa, but decided to give it one more go, skipping the New Hampshire primaries in which he received less than one percent of votes.
Perry’s drop is expected to prove helpful to Newt Gingrich who has been excelling in recent opinion surveys. Perry first entered the race with high numbers in polls but those numbers quickly fell after a series of missteps and those errors called into question whether the Texas politician was ready for the national stage.
The final pre-South Carolina debate will now go on with only four candidates on stage: Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santourum. The debate will be televised in Charleston, the same city where Perry originally announced his candidacy in August.
