The Florida GOP abandoned a loyalty pledge to the party’s eventual nominee for candidates to qualify for the primary ballot.

President Trump has refused to sign similar loyalty pledges, including the one to qualify for the RNC-sanctioned GOP debates.

Political analysts viewed the loyalty pledge issue as a turf war between Trump and Ron DeSantis to gain the upper-hand in the Sunshine State.

With the Florida GOP’s loyalty pledge scrapped, it’s viewed as a win for Trump.

“The Florida GOP Executive Committee just voted to REMOVE AND REVOKE the May 2023 rule change they made which would have denied Donald Trump ballot access unless he signed a loyalty oath!” said investigative reporter Laura Loomer.

“This means President Trump will be on the 2024 Florida GOP primary ballot, and he doesn’t need to sign the stupid loyalty oath,” she added.

According to a Fox News report, the Florida GOP executive board meeting became “contentious” amongst participants.

Per Fox News:

The pledge was adopted with little fanfare back in May, and DeSantis supporters, including state House Speaker Paul Renner, urged the board members to keep the pledge.

State Sen. Joe Gruters, a former Florida GOP chairman and a top Trump supporter in the Sunshine State, made the motion to drop the pledge, arguing that rules should not have changed in the first place less than a year before the primary.

According to reports, Polk County GOP member Ed Shoemaker warned during the meeting that “people will be pissed if we keep Trump off the ballot.”

The vote was not only a show of force for Trump in his adopted home state but is also a sign that DeSantis’ once iron grip over the Florida state party may be slipping.

“Anyone who wants to run for president as a Republican should be willing to pledge their support for our eventual nominee,” DeSantis campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin said in a statement.

“By putting this in place, whether it was intentional or not, the party looks like it was favoring a certain candidate,” Gruters said, according to the Associated Press.

“This has turned into a proxy battle — the Trump world versus the DeSantis world,” he added.

AP added:

Gruters said the requirement also would have violated Republican National Committee rules preventing states from changing the nomination process within two years of an election. But RNC rules give individual state parties until Oct. 1 to decide their plans for how they will nominate delegates who formally choose a presidential nominee.

“When people say, ‘Well, Trump doesn’t want to sign the loyalty oath,’ it’s not about that. It’s about the party putting up artificial roadblocks that didn’t exist four months ago,” Gruters said.

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