Marianne Williamson is suspending her presidential campaign, ending Biden’s long-running primary challenge

(Jose Juarez/Associated Press)

Marianne Williamson is suspending her presidential campaign, ending Biden’s long-running primary challenge

Election 2024

WILL WEISSERT

February 7, 2024

Self-help author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson announced the end of her long-running Democratic challenge to President Biden on Wednesday.

The 71-year-old former spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey considered suspending her campaign last month after winning just 5,000 votes in the New Hampshire primary. She wrote that she had to decide whether it is time for a dignified departure or to continue our campaign.

But Williamson ultimately chose to push through with two more primaries. She won only 2% of the vote in South Carolina and about 3% in Nevada.

I hope that future candidates will take what works for them, and draw from the well of information we have prepared, Williamson wrote in announcing the end of her bid. My team and I have brought some great ideas to the table, and I will enjoy seeing them live on in campaigns and candidates yet to be created.

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips is the last nationally known Democrat left running against Biden, who has posted big wins in South Carolina and Nevada and won easily in New Hampshire despite not being on the ballot after his allies launched a write-in campaign had set up.

Williamson first ran for president in 2020 and made national headlines by calling for a moral uprising against then-President Trump while proposing the creation of the Department of Peace. She also argued that the federal government should pay large financial reparations to Black Americans to atone for centuries of slavery and discrimination.

Her second bid for the White House featured the same non-traditional campaign style and many of the same policy proposals. She struggled to raise money and was plagued by staff departures in the earliest stages of her bids.

She grilled Biden, an avid Amtrak fan, by announcing her campaign at Union Station in Washington. She campaigned especially hard in New Hampshire, hoping to capitalize on state Democrats’ frustration with the president. That followed a new plan from the Democratic National Committee, championed by Biden, that reshuffled the parties’ 2024 presidential primaries by starting with South Carolina on Feb. 3.

Williamson acknowledged from the start that she was unlikely to defeat Biden, but she argued in her launch speech in March that our job is to create a vision of justice and love so powerful that it can overpower the forces of hate and injustice will prevail. and fear.

The DNC is not holding primary debates, and Democratic parties in some states, including North Carolina and Florida, are not even scheduling primaries to give Biden’s challengers a fighting chance.

A Texas native who now lives in Beverly Hills,

Williamson

is a resident of Texas. In 1970 she has

moved to California

to attend Pomona College, where she studied theater and philosophy and protested the Vietnam War; she quit a few years later. After wandering around the country and getting sidetracked by some

Entertainment weekly

Called bad boys and good dope, she moved to LA in 1983 and shared an apartment with actress Laura Dern. Williamson became a spiritual leader and wrote more than a dozen books, including one

Winfrey received his PhD

by saying: I have never been so moved by a book as by this book. Her books sold millions of copies, and she attracted a large celebrity following; In 1991, she officiated the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Fortensky at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Williamson was also actively involved with charities in the Los Angeles area that helped people with HIV or living in poverty.

In 2014, she ran an unsuccessful independent congressional campaign in California in 2014.

In 2018 she moved to the East Coast.

She ended her 2020 presidential run shortly before the first Iowa caucuses, announcing that she did not want to get progressive support from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ultimately was the last candidate to drop out before Biden locked up the nomination.

Times writers Seema Mehta and Faith E. Pinho contributed to this report.

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