Karrin Taylor Robson, a Republican running for governor of Arizona, said on Thursday that she was dropping out, a major shake-up of the party’s primary race and a sign of President Trump’s continued influence over G.O.P. politics.
Ms. Taylor Robson, a wealthy developer and lawyer who had gained a reputation as a moderate Republican even as she worked to appeal to the party’s pro-Trump wing, had trailed Representative Andy Biggs in most primary polls.
Though she earned Mr. Trump’s early endorsement, he later also bestowed his support to Mr. Biggs, who is far more aligned with the MAGA base that has determined recent Republican primary elections in Arizona.
A third Republican, Representative David Schweikert, entered the primary contest last fall, hoping to carve out a lane between Ms. Taylor Robson and Mr. Biggs.
“We cannot afford a divisive Republican primary that drains resources and turns into months of intraparty attacks,” Ms. Taylor Robson wrote in a statement announcing the suspension of her campaign. “It only weakens our conservative cause and gives the left exactly what they want: a fractured Republican Party heading into November.”
Ms. Taylor Robson’s flagging campaign had been attacked relentlessly from the beginning by hard-line conservatives and Trump allies like Turning Point USA, the conservative group based in Arizona, which threw its support behind Mr. Biggs. Her decision was another sign that the moderate brand of Republican politics long embodied by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who died in 2018, is no longer palatable to the state’s primary voters.
It was the second time that Ms. Taylor Robson learned that lesson: She lost to Kari Lake, the firebrand former news anchor, in a bitterly contested primary race for governor four years ago.
But the trend could also serve as a warning sign for Republicans. Ms. Lake went on to lose the general election to Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, and Arizona has elected two Democratic senators and a Democratic attorney general and secretary of state in recent years after long being a solidly Republican bastion.
The state’s Democratic leadership is widely seen as a product of Republicans’ nominations of candidates perceived as too extreme by a general electorate. Some Republicans fear they are repeating the same mistake this year by elevating Mr. Biggs, a member of the hard-line Freedom Caucus.
Mr. Schweikert left his competitive House seat to run for governor in September in part, he has said, because of the fear that Mr. Biggs would win the primary and then lose to Ms. Hobbs in November. Strategists speculated that he could eat into Ms. Taylor Robson’s faction of voters — which may have contributed to her decision to drop out.
“This is a critical time for our party to unite and avoid a costly, divisive primary,” Mr. Biggs wrote on X after Ms. Taylor Robson’s announcement, saluting her for her campaign.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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