Pete Buttigieg Ends Democratic Presidential Race

Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg returned Sunday evening to his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, to announce that he was ending his bid for the nominee ticket for the 2020 election. ​​

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"Tonight, I'm making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency. I will no longer seek to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for President," Buttigieg said before a crowd of supporters.

"But, I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new Democratic President next January."

The former mayor has decided to quit the Democratic race after he badly lost Saturday in South Carolina. Expected results also showed him far behind the frontrunners for the Super Tuesday, as he failed to build a broad coalition of voters. 

After narrowly winning the Iowa caucuses against Sen. Bernie Sanders and arriving second in the New Hampshire primary, the candidate’s campaign struggled to gain the momentum needed for Nevada, South Carolina and eventually the Super Tuesday.

Buttigieg’s exit marks another step in the narrowing of the Democratic field that now has six candidates. His departure comes a day after Tom Steyer, the billionaire former hedge fund executive dropped out of the race following a disappointing result in South Carolina where he invested millions of dollars.

Buttigieg's announcement also comes two days before the biggest voting day of the primary. If a candidate drops out of the race, he or she may endorse a rival candidate in the same party. Once this happens, the delegates formerly belonging to the candidate may pledge to the endorsed one. In his speech,  the former mayor did not mention any other candidate to endorse.

As mayor of a city that is 25 percent black, Buttigieg faced criticism for firing the first Blavck 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.

A Black Lives Matter group from South Bend released a statement saying it was “excited” that Buttigieg left the race. “We hope that he learned his lesson — that neoliberalism and anti-Black policies will no longer be tolerated,” the group wrote.