WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Sherrod Brown, the popular and unassuming US senator whose broad support among working-class voters made him a potential contender against President Donald Trump, announced Thursday he will not launch a 2020 White House bid.
“I will keep fighting for all workers across the country. And I will do everything I can to elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate in 2020,” Brown, a 66-year-old from the swing state of Ohio, said on Twitter.
“The best place for me to make that fight is in the United States Senate.”
The retreat of Brown, who had been on a weeks-long “dignity of work” tour to test the waters for a possible run, helps clear a path for a White House campaign by former vice president Joe Biden, the most prominent national figure yet to announce his 2020 plans.
Four other Democrats also announced this week that they will not run: New York’s centrist ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg, Obama-era attorney general Eric Holder, Senator Jeff Merkley, and 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton.
Biden nonetheless would be entering a crowded field, with a dozen Democrats already in the race to challenge the Republican president.
They include senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar.
Biden would join Klobuchar in occupying the largely uncluttered centrist lane, as other contenders embrace liberal policies like universal health care and a sweeping climate change proposal.
In a sign of Brown’s broad appeal, aides and supporters of the liberal Sanders were believed to be keeping a close eye on the Ohioan’s moves, well aware of his strength among labor groups and other progressive movements.
“Dignity of work is a value that unites all of us. It is how we beat Trump,” Brown said.
“And I plan on making sure that happens,” he added. “I will keep calling out Donald Trump and his phony populism.”
Sanders ally
Sanders praised Brown after he dropped out, saying he has been an “ally in the fight for economic justice.”
Brown himself has displayed a form of folksy populism. He has proved he can win elections in the American heartland, even as voters in Ohio elected more Republicans at the state and local level last year.
Trump snatched a shock victory in 2016 partly because he won key Midwest and Great Lakes states that had long leaned Democratic, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Experts and Democratic strategists had said Brown was in a decent position to win those states back. But he never registered substantially on the national radar.
The RealClearPolitics average of this year’s Democratic nomination polls put Brown at just 1.7 percent.
Biden leads that average tally with 29.3 percent support, compared to second-place Sanders at 19.8 percent and Harris at 11.8.
© Agence France-Presse
