ago? >> reporter: it got very silent and very electric because this has been moving at a glacial pace with the voting slowly shifting away from steele but nobody was certain that he would do this. when he released his supporters, he made a statement saying, you know, we must win. barack obama's agenda is not good for america. we fired pelosi. that was his campaign for so long. he said we fired pelosi. let's make america stronger, unified, etcetera. so a momentous development here. it seemed likely that he was not going to prevail but it was a big development that he saw the writing on the wall and dropped out. this is not decided. brooke, we are far from a final vote here. you can hear it's still ongoing behind me but it is between now this guy who was a member of steele's own team and then turned on him basically and so steele supporters are not likely to go to him. versus all the rest of the