Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg greets voters during a campaign stop in Dover, New Hampshire, July 12, 2019.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Democrat Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the 2020 presidential primary race, a senior campaign aide told CNBC.
He is flying to South Bend, Indiana, where he served as mayor for two terms, to make the announcement.
The Indiana Democrat waged an unlikely campaign that saw a little-known mayor overpower governors and U.S. senators in the race for the party nomination.
His decision to drop out of the race comes after former Vice President Joe Biden won a crushing victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, re-energizing a campaign that had flagged in the first three nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Biden’s renewed momentum would make it difficult for Buttigieg to win over moderate voters moving forward into Super Tuesday. It also caused some financing trouble: In the wake of Biden’s victory, bundlers working for his campaign were able to lure some donors who had been backing Buttigieg, CNBC reported.
During his longshot bid, Buttigieg outperformed expectations, assembling what at points was a substantial war chest and building out a vast national operation. Buttigieg, the first openly gay major presidential contender, scored a narrow delegate edge over Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucuses and finished a strong second place in New Hampshire’s primary.
But the one-time candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee ultimately failed to sustain his campaign’s momentum, and ran into difficulty attracting the support of black and other minority voters.
This became clear in the Nevada caucuses, where he finished a distant third place with only 2% of the black vote, and in South Carolina, where he collected 3% of the black vote and finished in fourth.
Buttigieg had predicted that wins in Iowa and New Hampshire would boost his support in the more diverse states that followed, but that outcome did not materialize.
Buttigieg’s showings in Nevada and South Carolina muddied potential paths to victory for the millennial Afghanistan war veteran ahead of Super Tuesday on March 3, when 14 states will host contests that collectively award a third of the race’s total delegates.
Earlier on Sunday, Buttigieg was pressed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about his decision to stay in the race by host Chuck Todd.
“Every day we are in this campaign is a day that we have reached the conclusion that pushing forward is the best thing we can do for the country and for the party,” Buttigieg said.
The coming Super Tuesday contests have escalated pressure on candidates who are under-performing in state surveys to drop from the contest.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar have resisted those calls, though.
Warren’s campaign released a memo on Sunday describing the Democratic National Convention in July as the “final play” for the campaign and committing to fight for delegates for as long as it could until then.
An aide to Klobuchar told CNBC shortly after Buttigieg’s departure from the race became known that the the moderate lawmaker was not planning to drop out any time soon. Klobuchar is attending an event in Minnesota Sunday evening. The state will be among those to vote on Tuesday.
— CNBC’s Lauren Hirsch contributed to this report.
