Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. hoped to ride her #MeToo credentials straight to the White House.
But she is a card-carrying member of the Clinton family’s New York political machine, who once called Hillary Clinton her greatest role model.
And once Gillibrand started flip-flopping on several key issues, like gun control, it became clear that Democratic voters would never allow her be their 2020 presidential nominee.
Never mind the fact that she used to be a Republican…
So it seemed that Gillibrand finally got the message yesterday, dropping out of the race.
“I know this isn’t the result that we wanted,” the 52-year-old New York senator said in an online video in which she didn’t endorse any other 2020 Democratic White House hopeful. “But it’s important to know when it’s not your time.”
President Donald Trump viciously mocked Gillibrand, joking that her dropping out was a terrible loss for Democrats:
A sad day for the Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped out of the Presidential Primary. I’m glad they never found out that she was the one I was really afraid of!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019
The decision came as Gillibrand failed to qualify for a debate coming next month in Houston by not hitting 2% in at least four approved public opinion polls while securing 130,000 unique donors — despite spending millions on online and TV ads to woo people contributing as little as $1.
That proved especially embarrassing since candidates who began the race with far lower national profiles, including businessman Andrew Yang, made it.
On the eve of Wednesday’s qualifying deadline, Gillibrand sat down with her family and decided that if a pair of polls set to be released the following morning didn’t help her meet the polling threshold, she’d drop out.
Both ultimately showed her at zero percent…
She initially hoped to stay in the race in a bid to qualify for October’s debates, but her financial situation made that impossible. Gillibrand finishes with just $800,000 left in her campaign bank account. That means she spent well over $7 million, just since June 30.
A campaign aide said Wednesday that getting media coverage that could help boost Gillibrand’s polling and fundraising had become too difficult. Gillibrand met with staff at her campaign headquarters in Troy, New York, on Wednesday afternoon to tell them her race was over.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.