He spoke from south bend, indiana where he was mayor for eight years. About a year and a half ago my husband came home from work what i thought about running for president. I laughed. , but at life. Because [applause] life gave me some interesting experiences on my way to find pete. After falling in love with pete he got me to believe in myself again. [applause] i told pete to run because i knew there were other kids sitting out there who needed to believe in themselves as well. [applause] we did, together. The campaign was built on an idea of hope, an idea of inclusion. An idea of addition rather than subtraction, bringing people together, looking your neighbor in the eye and saying maybe we do not agree on everything but lets agree on this. We had one shot. We went out with a oneshot and we gave it everything we had. It is time for every Single Person in this country to look to the white house and know that the institution stands for them. That they belong in this country. [applause] it has been an honored and a privilege to share my husband with the rest of this country. I am so proud that the same person you saw on the debate stage is the same person you saw as a town hall and is the same person that comes home to me every night. [applause] for those of you who know me you know i am not usually short on words tonight i will be. It is an honor to come home and bring home the person i love so dearly. Love,e welcome the man i mayor pete buttigieg. [applause] [applause] [crowd chanting buttigieg] hello. [applause] we love you. [applause] it so good to be in south bend. Sometimes the longest way around really is the shortest way. Here we are. In the last few years, america has faced enormous challenges, from an economy in transition to an economy selling chaos a president sowing discord across the country he is responsible for uniting. For Many Americans these challenges have amounted to a call for action call to action. Like so many others, i thought deeply about what i could do to make a difference, what i could do to make myself useful. It was in that spirit, with your help, that a year ago we launched our campaign for the american presidency. We began this unlikely journey with a staff of four in a cramped office right here in south bend, indiana, right on washington street. No big email list or personal fortune. Hardly anybody knew my name and even fewer could pronounce it. South bend showed everybody what to do. First name mayor, last name, pete. [chanting mayor pete] but by every conventional wisdom, by every historical measure, we were never supposed to get anywhere at all. As i said, that roller coaster february night a few weeks ago and iowa shocked the nation. Along that way, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality. [applause] in a field in which more than two dozen Democratic Candidates ran for president , senators and governors, millionaires, the former Vice President , we achieved a topfour finish in each of the first four states and we made history winning those iowa caucasus. All of that came about thanks to your support. Thanks to the power of this campaigns vision, in your hands. It proved that americans really are hungry for a new kind of politics. Rooted in the values we share. In cities, suburbs, rural communities, and crowds that spilled out of venues from Salt Lake City to raleigh to arlington, we saw americans ready to meet a new era of challenge with a new generation of leadership. We found countless americans ready to support a middleclass, millennial mayor from the industrial midwest, not in spite of that experience but because of it, eager to get washington to start working. [applause] in a divided nation, we saw fellow Democrats Join with independents, and some of those future, former republicans, to choose a different politics, to choose a politics defined not by who we push away but by how many we can call to our side. We sent a message to every kid out there wondering if whatever marks them out as different means they are somehow destined to be less than, to see that someone who once felt that exact same way can become a leading american president ial candidate with his husband at his side. [applause] we got into this race for a reason. We got into this race in order to defeat the current president and in order to usher in a new kind of politics. That meant guiding our campaign by the values we like to call the rules of the road. [applause] respect, belonging, truth, teamwork, boldness, responsibility, substance, excellence, and joy. [applause] and every decision we made was guided by these values. One of the values is truth, and today is a moment of truth. 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. Another of those values is responsibility, and we have a responsibility to consider the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify americans to defeat donald trump and to win the era for our values. [cheers and applause] and so we must recognize that at this point in the race, the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideas is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together. So tonight, i am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency. I will no longer seek to be the 2020 democratic nominee for president. But, i will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new democratic president come january. [cheers and applause] [chanting 2024] we have to, because every time this president brings partisan politics into the management of a deadly serious pandemic, or punishes officials who honor their oath of office by telling the truth, or quotes in religious language we are reminded just how urgent it is that we change who is in the white house. We cannot afford to miss this moment. [applause] with every passing day, i am more and more convinced that the only way we will defeat trump and trumpism is with the new politics that gathers people together. We need leadership to heal a divided nation, not drive us further apart. We need a broadbased agenda that can truly deliver for the american people, not one that gets lost in ideology. We need an approach Strong Enough not only to win the white house, but to hold the house, win the senate, and send Mitch Mcconnell into retirement. [cheers and applause] and that broad and inclusive politics, that is the politics that we have attempted to model through this campaign. That, i believe, is the way forward for our eventual nominee. So i urge everyone who supported me to continue in the cause of ensuring that we bring change the white house and working to win the absolutely critical down ballot races playing out across the country this year. [cheers and applause] there is simply too much at stake to retreat to the sidelines at a time like this. As the contest gives way to a season of weekly elections and delegate maps, it is more important than ever that we hold to what this is actually all about. Politics is not about the horse race. Its not about the debate stage or a precinct count in a spreadsheet, its about real peoples lives. Its about our patients, our families, our futures. We can and must put the everyday lives of americans who have been overlooked for so long back at the center of our politics. And every story that became part of this campaign help show us why and how we do just that. Politics is about people, and that is especially true of the people who touched this campaign. My competitors in a historically diverse field, those who have stepped aside and those still competing, thank you for demonstrating what Public Service can be. [applause] to the people of south bend, this river city we love so much, thank you for keeping me honest and thank you for keeping me going. [cheers and applause] and to our pete for america family, i cannot express how grateful i am to every staffer, every volunteer, every supporter who believed in what were doing. You walked in neighborhoods on hot summer days, and drove on icy roads in the wintertime. You tweeted and coded and crunched numbers. You built relationships and you built events. You lit up offices and filled High School Gyms with equipment and then with people and then with cheers in the name of our values, freedom and security, and democracy. [cheers and applause] our contributors, so many of you dug deep to fuel this campaign. Nearly a million grassroots supporters who sacrificed financially so that this message of hope and belonging could reach every corner of this country. Thank you for what you gave to the campaign. [cheers and applause] online, in person, with family, friends, and total strangers, you shared your personal stories and you made the life of this Campaign Part of your own. What you did and the way you did it was how we could show, not just help, the kind of campaign we could be in the kind of country we will build. You made me proud every single day. [applause] and last, i want to thank my own family. My mom, who not only helped raise me, but put her love of language to work. [cheers and applause] my father, who left us just as this was all getting underway. But he was very much here in part of this effort. [applause] and to the guy who took a chance on a first date with somebody all the way in south bend , indiana and never went back. [cheers and applause] i know that as this campaign ends, there comes disappointment that we wont continue, but i hope that everyone who has been part of this in any way knows that the campaign you have built, and the community that you have created, is only the beginning of the change that we are going to make together. [applause] my faith teaches that the world is not divided into good people and bad people, that all of us are capable of good and bad things. Today more than ever, politics matters, because leaders can call out what is best or worst in us. Can draw us either to our better or to our worse selves. Politics in itself is ugly, but at its best, politics can lift us up. It is moral, it is soul craft. [applause] earlier today, we were in selma, marching in commemoration of the Civil Rights Movement on the Edmund Pettus bridge, where i was humbled to walk in the symbolic and the literal shadows of heroes who, 25 years ago, made america more of a democracy than it had ever been, by their blood and by their courage. And seeing those moral giants made me ask what we might achieve in the years now at hand. How we might live up to the greatest moral traditions of political change in this country. It made me wonder how the 2020s will be remembered when i am an old man. I firmly believe that in these years, in our time, we can and will make American Life and politics more like it could be. More equitable, more just, and more decent. [cheers and applause] think of how proud of our time we could be if we really did act to make it so no one has to take to the streets in america for a decent wage, because one job is enough in the United States of america, whether you went to college or not. Imagine how proud we would be to be the generation that saw the day when your race has no bearing on your health or your wealth or your relationship with Law Enforcement in the United States. [cheers and applause] what if we could be the ones to deliver the day when our teachers are honored a little more like soldiers and paid a little more like doctors. [cheers and applause] what if we were the ones who rallied this nation to see to it that climate would be no barrier to our childrens opportunities in life . The chance to do that is in our hands. That is the hope in our hearts. That is the fire in our bellies. That is the future we believe in. A country that really does empower the americans to thrive in a future where everyone belongs. Thank you for sharing that vision. Thank you for helping us spread that hope. Thank you so much. Lets move on together. Thank you. [cheers and applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [crowd chanting thank you pete] watch our Live Campaign 2020 super tuesday coverage of the president ial primaries and caucuses from 14 states including alabama, arkansas, california, colorado, maine, massachusetts, minnesota, north oklahoma, tennessee, vermont, and virginia. Coverage begins tuesday live at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Listen from wherever you are on the free cspan radio app. Vice president pence and others speak at the conference known as aipac and washington, d. C. Atch live sunday morning 8 30 eastern on cspan two. Or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Nearly a third of democratic president ial delegates will be chosen this super tuesday. 14 states, democrats abroad and American Samoa will all be voting