Pete Buttigieg drops out of the race for president

Pete Buttigieg offered an uplifting message to his supporters as he announced the suspension of his presidential campaign on Sunday night in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana.  

The impromptu event came hours after reports emerged that Buttigieg would be dropping out of the race following a disappointing fourth-place finish in the South Carolina primary. 

The former South Bend mayor was met with cheers of ‘We love you!’ and ‘Mayor Pete’ chants as he took the stage following an emotional introduction by his husband Chasten.  

‘It’s so good to be in South Bend. Sometimes the longest way around really is the shortest way home. Here we are,’ Buttigieg told the crowd.  

‘We got into this race for a reason. We got into this race in order to defeat the current president and in order to usher in a new kind of politics.

‘And that meant guiding our campaign by the values we like to call the rules of the road. Respect, belonging, truth, teamwork, boldness, responsibility, substance, discipline, excellence, and joy. And every decision we made was guided by these values. One of those values is truth. And today is a moment of truth.

‘After a year of going everywhere, meeting everyone, defying every expectation, seeking every vote, the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close. For our candidacy if not for our cause. 

‘We have a responsibility to consider the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify Americans to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for our values. 

‘And so we must recognize that at this point in the race the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together. 

‘So tonight I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency. I will no longer seek to be the 2020 democratic nominee for president.

‘But I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new Democratic president come January.’ 

Buttigieg went on to urge his supporters to ‘continue in the cause of ensuring that we bring change to the White House and working to win the absolutely critical ballot races playing out across the country this year’. 

‘There is simply too much at stake to retreat to the sidelines at a time like this,’ he said. 

‘And as this contest gives way to the season of weekly elections and delegate math, it is more important than ever that we hold to what this is actually all about, politics is not about the horse race. 

‘It’s not about the debate stage or a precinct count in a spreadsheet. It is about real people’s lives. It is about our paychecks, our families, our futures. 

‘We can and must put the everyday lives of Americans who have been overlooked for so long back at the center of our politics.’ 

He then thanked all of the people who supported his bid for the White House, including his campaign staff, his family and his fans. 

‘I know that as this campaign ends, there comes disappointment that we won’t continue,’ Buttigieg said.

‘But I hope that everyone who has been part of this in any way knows that the campaign that you have built and the community that you have created is only the beginning of the change that we are going to make together.’ 

He continued: ‘My faith teaches that the world is not divided into good people and bad people, that all of us are capable of good and bad things. 

‘Today more than ever politics matters because leaders can call out either what is best in us or what is worst in us, can draw us either to our better or to our worst selves. Politics at its worst is ugly, but at its best politics can lift us up. It is not just policymaking, it is moral, it is soulcraft. That is why we are in this.’ 

Buttigieg described how hours earlier he visited Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ civil rights march and said he was ‘humbled to walk in the symbolic and literal shadows of heroes who 55 years ago made America more of a democracy than it had ever been by their blood and by their courage’. 

‘Seeing those moral giants made me ask what we might achieve in the years now at hand, how we might live up to the greatest moral traditions of political change in this country,’ he said.

‘It made me wonder how the 2020s will be remembered when I am an old man. I firmly believe that in these years in our time we can and will make American life and politics not just more wise and more prosperous but more equitable and more just and more decent. 

‘Think of how proud we could be of our time if we really did act so that no one has to take to the streets in America for a decent wage because one job is enough in the United States of America, whether you went to college or not. 

‘Imagine how proud we would be to be the generation that saw the day when your race has no bearing on your health or your wealth or your relationship with law enforcement in the united States. 

‘What if we could be the ones to deliver the day when our teachers are honored a little more like soldiers and paid a little more like doctors.  

‘What if we were the ones who rallied this nation to see to it that climate would be no barrier to our children’s opportunities in life.

‘The chance to do that is in our hands. That is the hope in our hearts. That is the fire in our bellies. That is the future we believe in. A country that really does empower every American to thrive and a future where everyone belongs. Thank you for sharing that vision, thank you for helping us spread that hope. Thank you so much. Let’s move on together.’  

An Afghanistan war veteran and the first openly gay candidate to seriously contend for the presidency, Buttigieg rose to the field’s top tier as an eloquent, disciplined speaker with a promise to unite Democrats, independents, and moderate Republican voters. 

His campaign picked up momentum early last month after a narrow win in the Iowa caucuses and a strong second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary. 

But he struggled as the race moved to more diverse states, less dependent on college-educated voters – culminating in a harsh loss to fellow moderate Joe Biden in Saturday’s South Carolina primary.   

Buttigieg had been critical of Biden, charging that the 77-year-old lifelong politician was out of step with today’s politics. 

But his criticism had shifted in recent days more toward front-runner Bernie Sanders, a polarizing progressive who was benefiting from the sheer number of candidates dividing up the moderate vote. 

Buttigieg had tried to make the case that his party thrived when it embraced candidates who offered generational change – but ended up being more successful at winning older voters while 78-year-old Sanders captured the energy of younger ones.  

His departure from the race reflects the growing pressuring among more moderate Democrats to consolidate in an effort to blunt the rise of Sanders, who Buttigieg said was too liberal to be elected. 

It came just two days before the 14-state Super Tuesday nominating contests that will offer the biggest electoral prize so far in the Democratic race to pick a candidate to take on Republican President Donald Trump in November’s election. 

Trump reacted to the news by tweeting: ‘Pete Buttigieg is OUT. All of his SuperTuesday 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 did not endorse any of the remaining candidates during his Sunday speech, but sources say he and former vice president Joe Biden traded voicemails after the news broke. 

Despite robust organizations in Iowa and New Hampshire and supporters who included an influx of former independents and Republicans, Buttigieg failed to overcome daunting questions about his ability to draw African American support key to the Democratic base.

He earned just three percent of the nonwhite vote in South Carolina’s Saturday primary, according to AP VoteCast, a a wide-ranging survey of the electorate. 

As mayor of a city that is 25 percent black, Buttigieg faced criticism for firing the first African American police chief in the history of South Bend and for his handling of the case of a white police officer who fatally shot an armed black man in June.

After his unexpected rise to contention in Iowa and New Hampshire last fall, Buttigieg became the target of Massachusetts Sen Elizabeth Warren for the high-dollar fundraisers he was hosting, notably one in a wine cave in California.

Minnesota Sen Amy Klobuchar also went at Buttigieg in the months before the caucuses for lacking national experience. 

She noted that he had lost his only statewide race as a candidate for Indiana treasurer in 2010, while she had won three statewide terms in Minnesota in part by carrying Republican-heavy regions.

Buttigieg presented a starkly different figure on the debate stage than the other leading candidates — all septuagenarians — and drew admirers for his calm, reasoned demeanor and rhetorical skills that reflected his Harvard-trained, Rhodes scholar background but that some voters and operatives described as ‘robotic’.

He had modeled his campaign somewhat on that of former President Barack Obama, who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses largely based on a message of unity and by drawing in a healthy bloc of first-time caucus participants, often the key in a crowded, high-turnout contest.

Buttigieg planned to withdraw hours after Democratic candidates commemorated a landmark civil rights march in Alabama on Sunday.

Some worshippers at the African-American church where the event was held turned their backs on his presidential rival Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who will first appear on ballots on Tuesday after skipping the first four contests.

Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, received a chilly reception at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma after the pastor, the Rev Leodis Strong, told the gathering the billionaire businessman initially had turned down the invitation to speak.

‘I was hurt, I was disappointed,’ Strong said as Bloomberg looked on stonily. ‘I think it’s important that he came, and it shows a willingness on his part to change.’

About 10 people in the small church with a couple hundred in attendance stood up and turned their backs on Bloomberg as he spoke about racial inequality.

Biden and Bloomberg are trying to present themselves as the party’s best choice to take on Trump, saying Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is too far to the left to win the general election.

Black voters are a key Democratic constituency, and Bloomberg has been criticized for supporting the use of a policing practice called stop and frisk in New York City that encouraged police to stop and search pedestrians and disproportionately affected blacks and Latinos. 

‘It’s just an insult for him to come here. It’s the disrespect for the legacy of this place,’ Lisa Brown, who traveled to Selma from Los Angeles, told Reuters after turning her back to Bloomberg. 

She said the idea to protest Bloomberg’s remarks had circulated but that she stood as an individual, not an organized group.

The quiet protest suggests Bloomberg faces an uphill climb with some African-American voters, who carried Biden to a resounding victory in South Carolina.

Biden, who was vice president to the first black US president, Barack Obama, was clearly the favorite at the Selma church. He was seated by the pastor, facing the pews where Bloomberg sat, and got a glowing introduction from US Representative Terri Sewell, a black Alabama lawmaker.

‘He has earned the right to be in this pulpit and to address you now,’ Sewell told the crowd.

The candidates were in Selma to mark the 55th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’, when civil rights marchers were beaten by state troopers and local police while crossing a bridge.

Some Democratic Party officials expressed concerns last week about Sanders’ early surge, worrying that his aggressive policy priorities including establishing a mandatory government-run healthcare system could turn off moderate voters badly needed to defend competitive seats in Congress.

‘I think the Democratic Party is looking for a Democrat – not a socialist, not a former Republican, a Democrat – to be their nominee,’ Biden told Fox News Sunday.

Biden’s reference to a former Republican appears to have been aimed at Bloomberg, who switched parties multiple times in his career.

Sanders attacked Biden for taking contributions from political organizations called Super PACs and billionaires, at what he said was the expense of working-class, middle-class and low-income people.

‘I don’t go to rich people’s homes like Joe Biden,’ Sanders said on CBS’ Face the Nation.

Biden lags Sanders in fundraising and organization in Super Tuesday states and beyond.

Sanders planned to campaign on Sunday in heavily Democratic California, where he leads opinion polls.

The Sanders campaign said overnight it raised $46.5million from more than 2.2 million donations in February, a huge sum dwarfing what any other Democratic candidate raised last year in any three-month period.

Bloomberg continues to spend. He purchased three minutes of commercial air time during on broadcast networks CBS and NBC on Sunday evening to address the coronavirus outbreak.