'Mayor Pete Buttigieg Is Dropping Out of the Presidential Race'
Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is dropping out of the presidential race, multiple campaign sources tell The Daily Beast, ending a historic presidential bid that went from novelty to legitimate threat to some of the biggest names in Democratic politics before running into the harsh realities of the nomination process.
“Pete is heading back to South Bend and will give a speech tonight suspending his campaign,” said an aide. “He believed we could build something bigger than any bigger person and that is what he did.”
The former mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city began his race with, even longtime aides admitted, slim hopes of building the fundraising apparatus and ground operation needed to win a modern campaign. But riding a wave of often glowing media coverage that centered on his unlikely biography as a Harvard-educated gay veteran and Rhodes Scholar, Buttigieg’s team created one of the most successful start-up presidential campaigns in modern memory, eventually winning the most delegates in the Iowa caucuses and finished an unexpectedly close second to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the New Hampshire primary.
But Buttigieg faltered in the subsequent two contests, Nevada and South Carolina, where the demographic limits of his mostly white base were tested and failed.
