Florida GOP will require 2024 candidates to sign loyalty pledge for primary

Republican candidates vying for the White House in 2024 will have to sign a loyalty pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee if they want to be on Florida’s primary ballot, according to state GOP officials. 

The new requirement in the Sunshine State has been filed with Florida elections officials and comes after the Republican National Committee announced earlier this year that GOP presidential debate participants must vow to back the party’s standard-bearer in order to be allowed onstage. 

“We were trying to be consistent with what the debate was requiring,” Evan Power, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, told Politico.

“I don’t think this will come as a surprise.”

The two leading GOP presidential candidates — former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — have so far been reluctant to commit to supporting the eventual nominee. 

“It would have to depend on who the nominee was,” Trump, 77, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in February.

DeSantis, 44, has similarly refused to directly say he would support Trump if he wins the nomination.

The Florida governor simply said he would “respect the outcome of the process” last month in South Carolina.

“That’s what I’ll do. I think I’m going to be the nominee. No matter what happens, I’m going to work to beat Joe Biden,” DeSantis added. 

Others in the GOP primary field have also bashed the RNC’s debate pledge. 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last month called the pledge a “useless idea” but said he would sign it in order to get on the debate stage. 

In a thinly veiled reference to Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told CNN in June that the party was “trying to protect a particular person” with the pledge requirement. 

Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), the latest candidate to enter the 2024 fray, has said he “won’t be signing any kind of pledges.” 

“The pledge — which is the word-for-word the same language as the RNC pledge — was requested and passed by our members to ensure maximum unity heading into the general election,” Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler told the Hill on Thursday.

“The days of party grifters such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger using Republican Party resources to secure a title and then weaponize that title against our own team must end. Contested primaries are part of the process, but we must always remember that the Democrats are the true threat to the America we love, and we must be unified to defeat every single one of them,” he added.