Washington Governor Jay Inslee has dropped out of the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
Governor Inslee had largely marketed his presidential bid on the single issue of global warming. Although he had spoken at length about this subject before most of his fellow candidates, the theme had quickly been taken up by others in the party’s far-left, most notably by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her “Green New Deal” – and subsequently echoed by most of the presidential candidates in order to appeal to the base.
Although Inslee participated in both of the first two debates, he was facing an uphill battle to qualify for the third round of debates in September. Despite successfully meeting the donor threshold of 130,000 individual donors, he had not registered two percent or more in a single poll for the second set of criteria, where a candidate needs to do so in four or more national polls.
Inslee is the fifth major candidate to withdraw, out of 27 total candidates. The first four to drop out before Inslee were: Former State Senator Richard Ojeda (D-W.V.), Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), former Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), and former Governor John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
Inslee first served as a congressman from Washington’s 4th Congressional District for one term, from 1993 to 1995, before being defeated in the Republican Revolution of 1994. He returned to the House from the 1st District in 1999, and went on to serve seven terms before being elected governor in 2012. He was re-elected in 2016, and is eligible to run for a third term in 2020, which may be one of the main reasons he chose to withdraw from the presidential contest.