Beto O'Rourke drops out of the 2020 race

Beto ORourke.
(Image credit: Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

Beto O'Rourke was born to be somewhere else.

The failed Texas Senate candidate is now a failed presidential candidate too, announcing Friday he was dropping out of the 2020 race. "This campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully," O'Rourke said in a lengthy statement, saying that he would no longer serve this country "as a candidate or as the nominee."

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The former Texas congressmember, once expected to be a frontrunner in the race, had sputtered since its beginnings. Despite finding a few moments of stardom in attacking President Trump, he'd especially tanked in recent polls, falling to the low single digits and never recovering. Yet his campaign didn't send out the warning cries like former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro or Sen. Cory Booker's (D-N.J.) did, and so his campaign departure came somewhat out of the blue.

Find O'Rourke's whole statement here.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.