Governor Jay Inslee, 2020 Democrat candidate who appeared in the first two debates, has dropped out.
Inlsee was unique in he made it clear that climate change was his #1 priority.
From Politico
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington pulled out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, saying “it has become clear I’m not going to be carrying the ball. I’m not going to become president.”
Inslee ran on a platform that focused on combating climate change, and said he was encouraged by the enthusiasm he saw for the issue during his campaign. He made the announcement on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” and said he was not ready to endorse another candidate at this time.
Some Democrats began receiving word that he would cease his campaign a few hours before his appearance on MSNBC.
Inslee’s decision to drop out comes about a week before the deadline to qualify for the next Democratic debate. Inslee struggled to gain any real traction in the primary, and while he had met the donor threshold set by the Democratic National Committee for the September debate, he was nowhere near meeting the polling requirement. Ten of the remaining 22 candidates have qualified so far.
In an email to supporters announcing his decision to drop out, Inslee acknowledged that it quickly became clear he would not be able to reach the polling threshold, even as he garnered the 130,000 donors needed.
“On Monday, our campaign hit one of two critical DNC thresholds to qualify for the next debate — 130,000 grassroots donors,” Inslee said in the email. “Reaching that challenging milestone proves the strong support that defeating climate change has amongst the grassroots of our party. However, at the same time we reached this threshold, it became clear that we would not meet the DNC’s polling threshold, thus we would not have been invited to the fall debates.”
The Washington governor was a longshot from the beginning of the race, starting out with a tiny war chest and no real name identification. He framed his candidacy almost exclusively around climate change, hoping that it would set him apart from the rest of the field.
This article was written by the staff of TheConservativeOpinion.com
By Jon Heltzel
