CONCORD, N.H. – Coloradan Michael Bennet dropped out of the race for president Tuesday night after a disappointing showing here.
“Tonight is not going to be our night,” he told supporters. “But let me say to New Hampshire — you may see me once again. … I think it’s fitting that we end the campaign tonight.”
The Democratic U.S. senator from Colorado was winning support from just 0.3% of New Hampshire voters with 85% of precincts reporting. The 55-year-old’s cash-strapped campaign — focused almost singularly on New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary for the last few months — failed to stand out in a crowded field.
Businessman Andrew Yang, whose results were in the low single digits, also dropped out Tuesday. Bennet had outlasted former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, whose short-lived run for president ended in August; he’s now running for Colorado’s other Senate seat.
“I feel nothing but joy tonight as we conclude this particular campaign and this particular chapter,” Bennet told more than 100 supporters at a restaurant in Concord. “I am going to do absolutely everything that I can do as one human being to make sure that Donald Trump is a one-term president. I will support the nominee of my party, no matter who it is, to make sure that you defeat Donald Trump.”
The room thundered with extended applause and cheers as Bennet concluded his speech.
Bennet got a later start than most of the field, announcing his candidacy last May after spending the previous month dealing with a prostate cancer diagnosis, surgery and then recovery.
As a candidate, he put forth what he considers “the most coherent set of policies in this race” on health care, immigration and other issues. Dubbed “The Real Deal,” they tend toward the pragmatic and centrist compared with the broad-reaching, costly plans issued by his rivals, such as Medicare for All.
Bennet put in a long day of stumping Tuesday, acknowledging that he needed a third- or fourth-place finish in New Hampshire to continue in the race. The Denver Post followed Bennet’s last 24 hours on the campaign trail:
12:15 p.m.: At the Bridge Cafe in Manchester, a familiar face greeted Bennet at his lunch stop. Will Kanteres, a campaign aide to former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado in 1984 who helped Hart win an upset in the New Hampshire primary, brought another veteran of that effort, former federal Judge James Muirhead, who met Bennet for the first time.
Bennet munched on a chicken pesto panini and then made the rounds in the cafe before leaving for a dessert stop at the Red Arrow Diner, a local legend around the corner.
Muirhead called Bennet’s Senate experience “outstanding” but said he may have been hamstrung by a late start. Kanteres added that being shut out of most Democratic debates and low fundraising also held Bennet back.
“It would’ve been great to have that lightning bolt strike again,” he said, referring to Hart’s triumph.
11:15 a.m.: State Rep. Mary Heath, one of Bennet’s more prominent endorsers, was among those who embraced him in a light rain in Manchester as he greeted late-morning voters. A retired educator, she said she felt kinship with Bennet, especially as she worries about the Trump administration’s policies toward public schools.
“Michael is good, kind, moral, ethical — he’s everything our current president isn’t,” Heath said.
“We designed this campaign to be here (in NH) on Election Day — and here we are,” @MichaelBennet tells more than two dozen staff and volunteers, some in from Denver, at his Nashua HQ. Final door knocking soon.
Here was his entrance: pic.twitter.com/jSEqqzJBRe
— Jon Murray (@JonMurray) February 11, 2020
9:20 a.m.: Bennet, holding two boxes of doughnuts, walked into his campaign’s New Hampshire headquarters in Nashua, on the state’s south end, to energetic chants by more than two dozen staff members and volunteers of “Two N’s, One T — Bennet is the one for me!”
“I’m so proud of Michael for the race that he has run,” Bennet’s wife, Susan Daggett, told the crowd, “(and) for the race that he will win — he’s going to knock it out of the park today. We’re going to surprise some people, OK? He has run a race that’s full of integrity, that really is a hopeful message for our future that is about the next generation.”
Listening was John Covert, a retiree from Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood who volunteered in New Hampshire in the final days to witness “the circus.”
He noticed a reticence when the state’s overexposed voters answered their doors.
“I don’t know how to describe their emotion — I think they’re frightened that we’re going to lose in November,” he said, speculating that New Hampshire Democrats still were struggling to figure out which candidate stood the best chance against Trump.
7:40 a.m.: At his first stop of the morning, Bennet shook hands outside the Webster School, a zoo of a polling place in north Manchester. Amy Klobuchar wrapped up a scrum with a dozen reporters and TV cameras nearby. Later, two former Massachusetts governors — Deval Patrick, running as a Democrat, and Bill Weld, who is challenging Trump in the GOP primary — stopped by.
Bennet greeted Calley and Scott Milne, early supporters who met his wife, and then him, late last summer. They hosted a house party for Bennet in November that drew 45 people. They had just voted for him.
Calley Milne, 48, a real estate agent, chose to be optimistic that he would register in the primary results. “I hope N.H. voters don’t go too strategic,” she said.
Well, meet Tim Boisvert. The 59-year-old builder is one of those strategic voters. He also had voted inside the school.
Most of the Democratic candidates “went too far left — way left,” he said. He considered Bennet — but only briefly. He voted Tuesday for Klobuchar.
“I think she had the best chance of anyone in the center,” Boisvert said. “We’re in New Hampshire — it’s our job to make sure we fire the right person up.”
7:30 p.m. Monday: Bennet ended the day before the primary at Dartmouth College, diagnosing America’s political ills to about five dozen students gathered by the school’s College Democrats. His daughters, ages 15 to 20, stood in the doorway.
“What I know about them and what I know about you is that you have never lived in a democracy that actually functions,” Bennet told the students. “You’ve lived in a country that has been at war for the entire time you’ve been alive — two different wars in the Middle East, neither of which yielded the outcomes that we promised they would. That can be really frustrating.”
He asked the students not to give up — and not to pin everything that’s wrong on Trump. He’s a symptom of greater problems, Bennet said.
Sophomore Gabe Gever, 21, listened intently and eagerly approached Bennet afterward. He said later that he still was trying to decide between Bennet and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He’s also a fan of former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who wasn’t on New Hampshire’s primary ballot.
Gever’s theory about why Bennet hadn’t caught on involved some of the same qualities he admired.
“Honestly, I think it’s because he’s nonpolarizing,” Gever said, in a year when a lot of Democrats want a liberal standard-bearer. “He’s a little bit — not boring, but … he just sort of speaks his mind and doesn’t necessarily take stances for attention. Politics now are so polarized that people just vote with their emotions.”
