Former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg on Sunday ended his presidential campaign after failing to secure a to win the Democratic nomination.
“Tonight, I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency,” he told a crowd in South Bend, adding: “I will do everything in my power to ensure we that have a new Democratic president come January” next year.
His decision came only a month after he won the delegate race in the Iowa caucuses and his campaign hoped that victory would propel him to national frontrunner status. It was enough to push him into a close second place to US Senator Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, but the success failed to help him as the nominating contest moved to other states.
Photo: AFP
Ultimately, his fourth-place finish in South Carolina proved to be the final blow to his candidacy.
The decision to drop out just before Super Tuesday today, when voters in 14 states go to the polls, is a potential boon for former US vice president Joe Biden, who is looking for Democrats to unite behind his campaign in an effort to blunt Sanders’ momentum.
Sanders on Sunday congratulated Buttigieg on running “a brilliant campaign” and invited his former rival’s supporters to join his campaign.
“I just want to welcome all of his supporters into our movement and to urge them to joining us in the fight for real change in this country,” Sanders said.
US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that “all of his Super Tuesday votes will go to Sleepy Joe Biden. Great timing. This is the REAL beginning of the Dems taking Bernie out of play — NO NOMINATION, AGAIN!”
Buttigieg held a brief call with some of his major donors just before making his announcement, according to a donor on the call.
The donor said Buttigieg read a statement, but kept it short. Many of the donors were angry to have learned of Buttigieg’s decision from media reports and said they felt blindsided by the move.
Buttigieg’s biography made him something of a wunderkind among the Democratic contenders. He graduated from Harvard University and was a Rhodes Scholar. He was the youngest mayor of a city with a population over 100,000 when he was elected at age 29, and is a veteran of the US war in Afghanistan
On the campaign trail, Buttigieg presented himself as a representative of a younger generation ready to take over from septuagenarians such as Sanders and Biden. He also touted his service as a US Navy intelligence officer, including his duty in Afghanistan, which he said gave him credibility on national security.
He scoffed during last week’s presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina, about Sanders’ praise for former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, saying the party could not win by displaying nostalgia for the 1960s.
The candidate’s cerebral approach to issues and ability to speak several languages drew an enthusiastic response with some audiences, but failed to connect with the wider Democratic electorate. Though he was able to fund raise large amounts — he brought in the second-biggest haul of any candidate last year behind Sanders — by the end of his run the campaign was bleeding cash.
Buttigieg’s lack of experience beyond the local level also drew scrutiny from other candidates in a race focused on electability and unseating Trump. Buttigieg easily lost an election to become state treasurer of Indiana in 2010, and in 2017 withdrew his bid for chair of the Democratic National Committee on the day of the election.
Still, Buttigieg played up his youth as an asset, offering himself as a candidate for generational change.
“I bring a different perspective,” Buttigieg said in a debate in Des Moines, Iowa, in January.
“There are enlisted people that I served with, barely old enough to remember those votes on the authorization after [the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks], on the war in Iraq. There are people now old enough to enlist who were not alive during those debates,” he said.
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