Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is dropping out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
She held a call with her campaign staff in Iowa earlier today, where she explained that the campaign was having financial struggles.
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“I don’t think anyone on my team was expecting this,” a staffer told the Huffington Post.
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Harris’s campaign has been open about its financial problems and her struggles in the polls. The campaign hasn’t had any TV ads since September and has been focused on social media for advertising.
Last month, her campaign laid off a significant part of its New Hampshire staff to focus more on Iowa, which will hold the first primary in 2020.
Harris is expected to travel to several early primary states this week to inform her campaign staff in person that she is dropping out.
Harris has a long record of supporting LGBTQ people. When she was a district attorney in San Francisco, she created a special unit to focus on hate crimes against LGBTQ people. She also pushed for bans on conversion therapy and the gay/trans panic defense, where violent criminals say that they panicked when they found out their victim was LGBTQ in order to diminish the severity of their crimes.
As California’s attorney general, she opposed Proposition 8, which banned marriage equality in the state, and then she presided over the wedding of the lesbian couple that successfully challenged Proposition 8 in court.
She has not commented on the end of her 2020 presidential bid.
RealClearPolitics‘s average of national polls has her at 3.4%, or sixth place behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sander (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
