Huckabee, O'Malley suspend presidential bids following Iowa caucuses

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Fox News confirms Martin O'Malley to suspend 2016 campaign

Ed Henry reports from Des Moines, Iowa

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Democratic presidential long-shot Martin O’Malley both called it quits Monday night after poor showings in the Iowa caucuses.

The candidates' campaigns both confirmed they would suspend their 2016 White House runs.

“I am officially suspending my campaign,” Huckabee tweeted. “Thank you for all your loyal support.”

Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, failed this time around to strike a chord with evangelical voters in the Hawkeye state.

The former Arkansas Baptist Convention president had struggled for months to compete with higher-polling and more headline-grabbing Republicans like Iowa caucus winner Sen. Ted Cruz and runner-up Donald Trump.

Playing up his cultural conservatism, Huckabee strongly opposed abortion rights and same-sex marriage, declaring that “the Supreme Court is not the supreme being, and they cannot overturn the laws of nature or of nature’s God.”

His campaign took a hit in December after Alice Stewart, Huckabee's senior communications director, left.  Stewart’s departure came a week after Huckabee’s friend Bob Vander Plaats, head of the influential Iowa conservative group The Family Leader, endorsed Cruz instead of Huckabee.

On the Democratic side, O’Malley announced he, too, would be suspending his presidential campaign.

The decision comes as he pulled about 1 percent support in the Iowa caucuses.

The former Maryland governor, who made an official announcement Monday night, also had a rough time gaining traction in a race where Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders got most of the media attention.

O’Malley campaigned as a can-do chief executive who championed gun control, same-sex marriage and an increase in the minimum wage in Maryland.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported O’Malley’s staff had been working without pay and secured a half-million-dollar loan in December to remain solvent.