3 Candidates Who Dropped Out of the 2020 Presidential Race

In 2020, dozens of applicants ran for president — but as the lengthy campaign season grinds on, more and more of them fall out of the race.

Richard Ojeda

After losing his parliamentary candidacy in West Virginia, Ojeda threw his hat into the ring for the presidency in November.

Ojeda, a former military parachutist who resigned as a state senator to concentrate on his campaign, voted for Trump in 2016 but rendered his views on the president soured clear.

“I think I relate to the people far more than what the president can ever relate to these people,” he said upon his campaign announcement. “The very people he comes down to West Virginia and stands in front of could never afford one single round of golf in some of his fancy country clubs. That’s not where I stand.”

Ojeda, 48, finally dropped out of the race at the end of January, writing in a way that he didn’t want people to accept money for a campaign that couldn’t compete.

“I want you to know that my fight does not end. I may not have the money to make the media pay attention, but I will continue raising my voice and highlighting the issues the working class, the sick and the elderly face in this nation,” he wrote.

Rep. Eric Swalwell

A long-shot when he announced that he was running in April, Swalwell stuck out his campaign until July, when he became the first candidate to fall out of the race on the debate stage.

The California congressman, 38, was heavily focused on gun violence prevention (he proposed a gun buyback program), climate change, health care, and the student debt crisis.

After his polling and fundraising figures fell short, he said he called it quits, but he pledged to keep fighting for a safer nation.

“After the first Democratic presidential debate, our polling and fundraising numbers weren’t what we had hoped for, and I no longer see a path forward to the nomination,” he stated. “My presidential campaign ends today, but this also is the start of a new passage for the issues on which our campaign ran.”

Sen. Mike Gravel

Before dropping out in August, the 89-year-old former senator from Alaska resulted a brief — and rather non-traditional — campaign.

Gravel, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008, first as a Democrat and then as a Libertarian, was persuaded to run by a couple of teenagers and declared his candidacy by claiming that he only wished to get him to the stage of the debate to “push the field left.”

Despite a viral Twitter-heavy campaign, facilitated by 18 year olds, one a high school senior and the other a freshman at Columbia University, Gravel did not managed to qualify for the first discussion in June and missed the voting mark a month later for the second debate.

He fell out on Aug. 6, endorsing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard since then.

“I’m proud and honored to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for the presidency of the United States,” he said in a video on Twitter. “Bernie has a program that benefits all Americans — not just the 1 percent. He will be a great president for all Americans.”