Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced on Friday that he is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primary.
Related: De Blasio Tells New Yorkers He’s ‘Sorry’ They Have Trump as President
This winds up his longshot campaign for the presidency after he struggled from the beginning to gain real traction in his efforts.
“I feel like I contributed all I can to this primary election and it’s clearly not my time,” de Blasio announced said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday.
“So I’m going to end my presidential campaign, continue my work as mayor of New York City, and I’m going to keep speaking up for working people.”
De Blasio entered the presidential race back in May and ran as a progressive.
His campaign “never caught fire,” as Fox News and other outlets noted.
While he managed to qualify for the first two rounds of Democratic presidential primary debates, he did not make the cut for the third debate, held in Houston several weeks ago.
De Blasio was polling at less than 1 percent nationally, according to the Real Clear Politics average.
“De Blasio sought to cast himself as the most progressive candidate in the large field of Democrats vying to take on President Donald Trump,” CNN noted, “and he used his time on the national stage to attack less progressive candidates, namely former Vice President Joe Biden, for positions that he felt were out of step with the current mood of the Democratic Party.”
But the Big Apple mayor was “unable to convince liberal Democrats that he was more qualified than Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the two leading liberals in the 2020 race,” as CNN also pointed out.
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