Former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race — telling supporters Sunday night that the path to victory “has narrowed to a close.”
“We were never supposed to get anywhere at all,” Buttigieg, 38, said while announcing his decision in South Bend.
“Today is a moment of truth … the truth is the path has narrowed to a close.
“So tonight I’m making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency,” he said.
Buttigieg’s surprise move followed his dismal performance Saturday in the South Carolina primary, where he came in a distant fourth place among Democrats with around 8 percent of the vote.
It also came two days before the “Super Tuesday” Democratic primaries, in which 1,357 delegates will be at stake in states including California, Texas, Virginia and North Carolina.
While Buttigieg is no longer in the race, he assured his supporters Sunday night he will continue fighting to help Democrats defeat President Trump.
“I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a Democratic president come January,” he said.
Earlier Sunday, Buttigieg had told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he “knew South Carolina was going to be a challenging state” but added, “I think the most important thing right now is to look at what we can do to make sure that we put forward a campaign that is going to end the Trump presidency.”
Buttigieg also said he was still fine-tuning his strategy for competing in the Super Tuesday contests.
“Well, we believe that there are places from coast to coast, in districts across different states, where our message is resonating particularly well,” he said.
“We’ll be looking at the math as we continue to push and make the most of the resources that we have.”
Buttigieg — a Harvard grad, Rhodes scholar and Naval Reserve intelligence officer — rose from obscurity as the two-term mayor of South Bend with a White House bid that scored him a surprise victory in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus and a strong second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.
He cited those accomplishments Sunday night.
“In a field in which more than two dozen Democratic candidates ran for president — senators and governors, billionaires, a former vice president — we achieved a top four finish in each of the first four states,” said Buttigieg.
He also made history as the first openly gay man to run for president.
But his inability to connect with African-American voters — which mirrored problems he had with South Bend’s black community — led to just 3 percent support from that crucial constituency in South Carolina.
Buttigieg’s campaign raised nearly $83 million, spent more than $76 million and had $6.6 million on hand as of Jan. 31, according to the most recent figures available from the federal Election Commission.