Twelve Republicans announced their candidacies for president, though by late January, nearly all had dropped out.
The is underway, now with just two Republicans still seeking their party’s nomination to challenge President Biden in his quest for reelection to a second term.
The kicked off the nominating process on Monday, Jan. 15, when thousands of Republicans braved the bitter cold to gather and select their choice of a nominee. Former President Donald Trump placed first in Iowa, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley close behind him.
Two days before the New Hampshire primary, on Jan. 21, he was dropping his presidential bid and supporting Trump, leaving just Haley and Trump in the race for the GOP nomination.
DeSantis’ exit gave Haley the head-to-head matchup with Trump that she wanted, and she headed into the New Hampshire primary hoping to unite an anti-Trump coalition of moderate Republicans and independents capable of slowing his march to the nomination. But Haley’s efforts ultimately couldn’t shake Trump’s grip on the GOP, as the former president with 54% of the vote to Haley’s 43%.
The further cemented Trump’s status as the clear front-runner among the Republican presidential hopefuls, but his by the Justice Department and two other indictments by local prosecutors in and still loom over the ongoing race.
Here is the current field of candidates, others who decided against running and those who dropped out.
After months of saying that it was his “intention” to run for reelection, Mr. Biden made it official on April 25, 2023, with the release of a video declaring, “Let’s finish this job.”
“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America — and we still are,” the president said in the three-minute-long video. “The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.”
Mr. Biden sought to draw distinctions between his administration’s policy positions and those of his political opponents by using footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and outside of the Supreme Court, as well as images of Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, former President Donald Trump and GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away,” Mr. Biden said. “Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”
The president said that it is the time for Americans “to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms, stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
“Let’s finish this job, I know we can,” he said, “because this is the United States of America. And there’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together.”
Mr. Biden’s reelection announcement had been anticipated for months, though the timing had shifted from January to February and finally April.
People familiar with the ongoing planning told CBS News that the president was in no hurry to launch his campaign and take media attention from leading GOP contenders Trump and DeSantis, who have begun duking it out. And now, there’s the indictment of Trump by a grand jury in New York, which has unclear political and legal implications.
Mr. Biden’s announcement came as a special counsel was with classified markings that were discovered at his former office at a think tank and his residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
Trump was the first candidate of either party to formally a 2024 presidential run, launching his campaign in a November 2022 speech from Mar-a-Lago, his South Florida resort.
The early front-runner for the GOP nomination, Trump delivered the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 4, 2023, after winning its straw poll of attendees.
While Trump remains popular within the GOP, his . In March 2023, he became the when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted him on charges related to a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
His legal peril grew on June 8 when he was on charges stemming from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into his handling of sensitive government documents. In August, by another federal grand jury, this time on charges related to his alleged efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. And a grand jury seated in Fulton County, Georgia, returned an indictment naming Trump and 18 others in mid-August related to alleged attempts to reverse the outcome of the state’s presidential election.
In civil court, Trump was brought by columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claimed Trump raped her in a department store fitting room in the 1990s and defamed her when she came forward several years ago. He also denied those allegations. The jury did not find that he raped Carroll, but did find that he sexually abused her, and ordered him to pay her roughly $5 million. The bar for finding someone liable in a civil case is lower than the burden of proof required to secure a criminal conviction, and does not count as a criminal record.
Trump has said that an indictment would not deter him from seeking the presidency and has used his – taken when he surrendered to Fulton County authorities — to for his campaign.
“I wouldn’t even think about leaving,” the former president said at CPAC last year when asked whether he would stay in the race if charged.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, for the Republican presidential nomination in mid-February of last year, becoming the first challenger to her former boss.
In her pitch to voters, Haley, 51, has characterized herself as part of a new generation of Republican leadership and proposed mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 — a subtle jab at Trump, who is 77, and Mr. Biden, who is 81.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, and served two terms as governor. She was the top U.S. diplomat at the United Nations during the Trump administration from January 2017 to December 2018.
Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, that he would challenge Mr. Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he believes it’s time for a new generation to lead his party.
“I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country,” Phillips told CBS News chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa. “But it’s not about the past. This is an election about the future.”
Phillips, 54, was , and elected to represent the state’s 3rd Congressional District in 2018.
His biological father was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in July 1969. Phillips was heir to his adoptive father’s distilling empire and served as president of Phillips’ Distilling Company until stepping down in 2012 to run gelato maker Talenti.
In Congress, he is the vice ranking member of the House Small Business Committee and serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Phillips is also a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Cornel West, a professor and progressive activist, initially said he would be running for the Green Party nomination, but announced on Oct. 5, 2023, that he would run as an independent instead.
In a video posted on Twitter in June 2023, West said he would be running as a third-party candidate because “neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech.”
The video used a clip from his interview last year with Bill Maher in which he described the choice between the Democratic and Republican parties as a choice between “neo-fascists like Brother Trump or milquetoast liberals like Brother Biden.
