Pete Buttigieg suspends his presidential campaign ahead of crucial Super Tuesday vote

The winner of the first Democratic Party early voting contest in Iowa, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, has dropped out of the race for the nomination ahead of Super Tuesday.

Buttigieg, the youngest on the Democratic candidate roster, called it quits after finishing a respectable fourth in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, where he was surpassed only by former VP Joe Biden, current Democratic race frontrunner Bernie Sanders, and billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who himself bowed out shortly after the results came in.

“After a year of going everywhere, meeting everyone, defying every expectation, seeking every vote — the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy, if not for our cause,” Buttigieg said, announcing his decision to pull the plug on his campaign at a rally in his hometown of South Bend on Sunday night.

Buttigieg rather unexpectedly took center stage in the nomination process early on after he stunned observers, edging out Sanders in the Iowa caucus on February 3.

The Afghan War veteran and first openly gay candidate vying for a major party nomination managed to keep the momentum going up to the second contest on February 11, narrowly losing the New Hampshire primary to Bernie Sanders.

Buttigieg’s withdrawal from the race could give a boost to Biden’s chances of swaying the nomination process in his favor, cutting short the leadership of Sanders who, despite the former VP’s landslide victory in South Carolina, is still leading by eight delegates overall after winning New Hampshire, Nevada and the popular vote in Iowa.

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