Ryan Binkley is keeping the faith

Who is Ryan Binkley?

While everyone is treating the GOP presidential primary as a one-on-one showdown between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, Binkley — a wealthy pastor and businessperson — is still (technically) in it.

If you didn’t realize that, you could be forgiven.

He didn’t come close to qualifying for any of the debates. He finished so far behind in New Hampshire that he was beaten by several candidates who had already dropped out. And outside of Trump mocking Ron DeSantis by noting that Binkley was the first candidate to visit all 99 of Iowa’s counties, the rest of the field has ignored him.

But he’s still here — and he’s leaning into the fact that no one knows he’s running for president.

Binkley has been seeking the GOP nomination since April. He’s poured millions of dollars into his bid, though he continues to barely register with voters. His campaign highlight so far is beating former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson in the Iowa caucuses — in which Binkley received less than 1 percent of the vote.

New Hampshire was worse. Binkley finished with just over 300 votes, coming in behind dropouts Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence.

The Bink-mentum is going the wrong way. But he says he isn’t going anywhere.

He gets that voters support Trump — “Republicans are mad” about the former president’s indictments, Binkley reasoned in an interview with POLITICO. And if he drops out, he says he prefers Trump to Haley, but would back the ultimate nominee.

Binkley says he has teams on the ground in Nevada — where he’ll be competing against Trump in the party-run caucuses — and South Carolina.

“I'm not doing it to divide him, hurt him. I'm doing it for our country because I feel led to speak to this country,” Binkley said.