Arizona Speaker of the House David Gowan gave up on his hopeless campaign for Congress today and endorsed fellow Congressional District 1 candidate Gary Kiehne, saying that Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu "must not be our nominee."

Gowan's statement:

After prayer and conversations with my family, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Congress and to endorse my friend Gary Kiehne in the Republican primary for Congress. I ran for Congress because I felt called to do my part to save the country that has given me so very much. I felt that a conservative Republican who understood the issues facing rural Arizona would be the best fit for this district. But winning this district means nominating such a conservative and, while I was glad to see that our media and grassroots efforts were having a positive effect on our numbers, the improvement was not coming fast enough to win. This race is not about me, and we can’t save the country if we don’t win.

For all of our various differences, what every other candidate in this race can agree on is that Paul Babeu must not be our nominee if we are to prevail in November. The baggage he brings to the race simply cannot survive the millions of dollars that the Democrats will bring to this race and we have no reason to believe that the Republican Party will spend millions of dollars trying to save such a lost cause, particularly not with so many other critical races going on around the country. Staying in the race, and taking conservative votes away from the rest of the field meant that not only could my campaign result in costing conservatives the nomination, but Republicans the seat in November. I could not allow that to happen.

From there my decision was easy. Every candidate polling this race knows that the candidate best positioned to stop Paul Babeu is Gary Kiehne. Gary’s a solid conservative and the candidate who will be able to coalesce enough support in the General Election to win this very important seat. I believe he will represent our district with honor, integrity, and the utmost commitment to conservative principles. So I am suspending my campaign, endorsing Gary, and will be encouraging all of my supporters to help Gary over the finish line. Further, I respectfully ask the rest of the conservatives in the field to both consider and make the same decision. It will be nothing to brag about to your grandkids how one time you finished 3rd in a primary for Congress, if you have to then explain what happened to our country after the Democrats won the seat and pushed their extreme agenda. Everyone has run a good race, we have a quality field of quality candidates, but it is time to face reality and rally to the conservative cause.

Gowan, who has often opposed programs designed to aid single moms, children and other low-income Arizonans, is under investigation by the Arizona Attorney General's Office over his misuse of state resources for his congressional campaign.