Pete Buttigieg, the nation's first
openly gay major presidential candidate, on Sunday ended his historic
bid for the White House.
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana
returned to his hometown to announce his decision. The candidate was
introduced by his husband, Chasten Buttigieg.
“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,” Buttigieg said.
“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 [President] 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,” he said to cheers and chants of
“2024!” from the audience.
Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa
caucuses early last month, then placed second in the New Hampshire
primary. But defeats in Nevada last week and South Carolina on
Saturday showed that Buttigieg was failing to attract support among
minorities, a crucial demographic among Democrats.
Fred Karger, who was annoyed at the
media throughout much of Buttigieg's campaign for failing to point
out that he was the nation's first openly gay presidential candidate
in 2012, congratulated Buttigieg, his husband Chasten and the “entire
campaign team on an incredible campaign!”
The LGBTQ Victory Fund, which had
endorsed Buttigieg's presidential bid, simply tweeted: “Thank you,
@PeteButtigieg.”