Howard Schultz announces he will not run for president
Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, will not launch an independent bid for president, he announced on Friday in a letter to supporters, and will instead focus his financial resources elsewhere in the 2020 election cycle.
“My belief in the need to reform our two-party system has not wavered, but I have concluded that an independent campaign for the White House is not how I can best serve our country at this time,” Schultz wrote.
The 66-year-old billionaire businessman first confirmed in a January interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he was exploring a challenge to President Donald Trump as a “centrist independent outside of the two-party system.”
His prospective candidacy was immediately criticized by national Democrats, who viewed a Schultz run as a possible spoiler campaign that could deny the party’s eventual nominee support from moderate voters and ensure a second Trump term.
In his letter Friday, Schultz maintained that “statistically and anecdotally, there is an undeniable appetite for meaningful political reform” in the United States, and said he “had hoped to represent this common-sense view.”
Schultz cited the “extreme voices” which “currently dominate the national dialogue” as a reason he decided against a White House bid, as well as voters’ fears that supporting an independent candidate “might lead to re-electing a uniquely dangerous incumbent president.”
He also acknowledged the eventual Democratic nominee may not be known before various deadlines to submit the required number of signatures for his name to appear on the ballot, and said he was not willing to risk running against a moderate Democrat.
Schultz was absent from the campaign trail for several months over the summer following three back surgeries, which he said Friday “have required a level of recovery that has prevented me from continuing my travels and engaging with people to the degree that is necessary.”
Schultz said he will spend the months leading up to 2020 “and the years ahead supporting bold and creative initiatives to transform our broken system and address the disparity of opportunity that plagues” the country.
The money he said he was prepared to devote to a presidential campaign will be directed toward investments “in people, organizations and ideas that promote honesty, civility and results in our politics, and that move the country beyond two-party gridlock” — prioritizing “common-sense policies and initiatives that can help address widening inequality at home, while strengthening America’s standing in the world.”
Schultz, who has previously characterized himself as “a lifelong Democrat” and endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, announced in June 2018 he would leave his role as executive chairman of Starbucks.
