Marianne Williamson suspends presidential campaign

Marianne Williamson suspended her presidential campaign on Friday, just over a week after the author and spiritual adviser laid off her entire campaign staff.

“I stayed in the race to take advantage of every possible effort to share our message. With caucuses and primaries now about to begin, however, we will not be able to garner enough votes in the election to elevate our conversation any more than it is now,” Williamson said in a post on her website. “The primaries might be tightly contested among the top contenders, and I don’t want to get in the way of a progressive candidate winning any of them.”

“To the remaining Democratic candidates, I wish you all my best on the road ahead. It was an honor being among you. Whichever one of you wins the nomination, I will be there with all my energy and in full support,” Williamson continued.

After firing her campaign staff on January 2, Williamson issued a statement confirming she was still campaigning, saying she “cannot afford a traditional campaign.”

“‍I am not suspending my candidacy, however; a campaign not having a huge war chest should not be what determines its fate,” Williamson said. “As long as I feel a connection with voters that gets to the heart of things, bringing forth the conversation that would win the 2020 election and help transform this country, I will remain in the race.”

Williamson appeared at the first Democratic presidential debates over the summer, but failed to meet the fundraising and polling thresholds to appear at later debates.

In a June interview with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett for “The Takeout” podcast, Williamson said that calling her a “spiritual guru” was “dismissive” and made her seem “like I’m a less intelligent thinker, a little woo-woo.”

Williamson was also one of the few candidates to propose a plan to institute reparations for the African-American descendants of slaves. Her plan called for issuing $200 to $500 billion for reparations.

“The thing about reparations that I feel is very important, and this goes beyond race based policies, there is an inherent mea culpa, there is an inherent acknowledgement of a wrong that has been done by one people to another and of a debt owed. So reparations carries an emotional and psychological and even and spiritual force,” Williamson told Garrett in June.

Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report