Hyde achieved national prominence during the January 2020 impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump for his texts claiming to have surveilled Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
“I’m withdrawing from the race,” Hyde said on Friday of his primary campaign against Republican candidate David Sullivan. “Sullivan outraised me,” Hyde continued, “and I want the nominee not to have to primary. Only chance to win.”
Hyde had hoped to challenge Democratic incumbent Representative Jahana Hayes for her congressional seat.
Hyde’s campaign website said that he “is an ardent support [sic] of our duly elected president, President Trump, and his agenda of renewing American Greatness.”
His past text messages with Lev Parnas, a close associate of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, insinuated that he was secretly surveilling Yovanovitch by tracking her movements and computer use.
Hyde’s texts were taken seriously since the president had already been accused unlawfully soliciting Ukrainian authorities to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election by announcing an investigation into corruption allegations against presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Parnas told Rachel Maddow on January 15 night that he didn’t take Hyde’s texts “seriously,” didn’t believe Hyde had actually surveilled Yovanovitch and thought Hyde was merely “trying to make himself bigger than he was.”
In a January 16 interview, Hyde denied being a “close associate” of Parnas and said his texts were “just colorful” and “joking.”
“I thought we were playing,” Hyde said. “We just had some colorful texts, had a few pops way back when I used to drink, and it’s kind of unfortunate that the left ought to get their panties in a bunch.”
Hyde had been under pressure by other Republicans to drop out from his race, according to the Hartford Courant, partly because of a December 3, 2019 tweet he wrote in response to California Senator Kamala Harris dropping out of the presidential race.
“She went down, brought to her knees,” Hyde wrote. “Blew it. Must be a hard one to swallow… #KamalaHarris #heels up.”
“He needs to end his bid for Congress,” House Republican leader Themis Klarides publicly said in response to Hyde’s tweet. “Connecticut Republicans cannot tolerate this and won’t,” she continued before telling state Republicans to ally behind Sullivan.
Newsweek has reached out to Hyde for comment. He hadn’t responded by the time of publication.
