Kamala Harris Is Dropping Out of the 2020 Presidential Race
California Senator Kamala Harris has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race, according to Politico.
On a Tuesday call with her staff, Harris reportedly attributed her decision to suspend her campaign to financial struggles, the Huffington Post reports. In a public post published to Medium on Tuesday afternoon, Harris wrote, “I’m not a billionaire. I can’t fund my own campaign. And as the campaign has gone on, it’s become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.”
Harris has struggled both in the polls and in terms of fundraising, raising just $11.6 million in the third quarter (in contrast, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders each raised close to double that amount).
Last week, a New York Times article, “How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled,” pointed to structural issues within Harris’s campaign, quoting state operations director Kelly Mehlenbacher as saying, “This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly. With less than 90 days until Iowa, we still do not have a real plan to win."
Harris struggled to find support among progressive voters, many of whom objected to her controversial record as a federal prosecutor and pointed to her policies, like establishing a program to jail parents whose children skip school, as evidence of her overly harsh criminal justice philosophy (Harris did apologize for that particular policy, to little avail).
There were bright spots in Harris’s campaign, such as the July Democratic debate, in which she took on Joe Biden over the issue of school busing, but Harris’s memorable performance on that occasion wasn’t enough to garner sustained support.
Harris is the third Democratic candidate to drop out of the 2020 race in less than 48 hours, following former Pennsylvania Representative Joe Sestak and Montana Governor Steve Bullock. Harris had qualified for the Democratic debate in December before dropping out, leaving the debate to Buttigieg, Biden, Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren, among others.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
