New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.) has announced that he is withdrawing from the race for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
Making the announcement on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” de Blasio said that he “[felt] like I contributed all I can to this primary election and it’s clearly not my time.” He instead vowed to “continue my work as mayor of New York City, and…to keep speaking up for working people.”
From its launch nearly six months ago, de Blasio’s campaign has struggled to poll above one percent, and he was widely considered to be one of the long-shot candidates who had no chance at winning the nomination. In his only two debate appearances, he frequently resorted to attacking some of the frontrunner candidates, but this tactic failed to gain him any traction, and he subsequently has not qualified for any further debates.
In addition to his poor polling numbers nationwide, de Blasio’s White House bid was also extremely unpopular even in his own city: One poll showed that up to 76 percent of New Yorkers did not support his attempt to run for president.
De Blasio has been Mayor of New York since his landslide election in 2013, and was re-elected in 2017. Prior to that, he served on the New York City Council for seven years, then held the office of Public Advocate of New York City for three years before being elected mayor.
De Blasio is the eighth candidate to drop out of the massive Democratic primary field. Nineteen candidates remain.