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Eliminated Democratic primary candidate Marianne Williamson (January 2024)
Photo: Cj Gunther / EPA
Biden competitor Marianne Williamson has stopped her campaign for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. She made the decision after finishing second in the South Carolina primary with just 2 percent of the vote.
The 71-year-old is a former “spiritual advisor” to Oprah Winfrey. She had already considered suspending her campaign last month after receiving just 5,000 votes in the New Hampshire primary. She wrote that she "had to decide whether now is the time for a dignified exit or to continue our campaign."
Williamson ultimately decided to run in two more primaries, but won only two percent of the vote in South Carolina and about three percent in Nevada. Representative Dean Phillips from Minnesota is the last Democrat running against Biden in the primaries.
Williamson proposed a Ministry of Peace when she ran for office in 2020
Biden now has a better handle on the Democratic primaries. This is unsurprising considering he is a sitting president. Still, polls show that most Americans — even a majority of Democrats — don't want him to run again.
Williamson first ran for president in 2020 and made national headlines when she called for a "moral uprising" against then-President Donald Trump while proposing the creation of a Department of Peace. She also advocated that the federal government pay large financial reparations to black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.
In her second candidacy, she made similar policy proposals. But she struggled to raise money and was plagued by staff departures early in her candidacy.
aka/AP