Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has ended his presidential campaign.
The 68-year-old Inslee, who ran his campaign for the Democratic nomination primarily to shine a light on the issue of climate change, made the announcement Wednesday night on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.
“It has become clear that we’re not going to be carrying the ball, I’m not going to be the president, so I’m withdrawing tonight from the race,” Inslee said.
“I’ve been fighting climate change for 25 years and I’ve never been so confident of the ability of America now to reach critical mass to move the ball, I believe we are going to have a candidate to fight this battle.”
Inslee declined to endorse any of the other candidates running, but said that he would “support the Democratic nominee no matter who it is.”
In a letter to supporters sent out after the announcement, Inslee said that his campaign had made climate change a more salient issue among the wide slate of candidates currently vying to take on President Trump.
“In recent presidential cycles, climate change got little attention from the candidates, the DNC, or the media,” Inslee said. “We vowed to change that in a big way and succeeded. Many of the campaigns started with little attention to climate, but since our campaign began, we’ve seen almost every serious candidate put out a climate plan; we’ve seen climate come up in both debates; and we now have two networks hosting nationally-televised climate forums in September.”
“What we accomplished together is a testament to the power of a small group of people of strong conviction committed to making a big difference,” he added.
Inslee told Maddow that he would be be making a statement about his next moves on Thursday.
“I need to go back to the state of Washington and talk about what I’m going to do in my future political career,” the two-term governor said.
So early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and organize. Together, we will continue the fight to defeat the climate crisis.
— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) August 22, 2019
Inslee didn’t have the polling numbers to reach the next Democratic debate, despite reaching the donor threshold days ago. A RealClearPolitics national average of polls had Inslee at 0.2% support among Democratic voters. Joe Biden currently leads in the polls, registering 28.8% support.
