In a video announcing his decision Tuesday, Merkley highlighted “three great crises” facing America that amount to a “battle for the soul of our nation,” focusing on threats to economic equality, the climate and our democratic system.
“I’m going to work to fix our broken and dysfunctional Senate so it isn’t just a graveyard for good ideas,” Merkley said. “To fix America we must fix the Senate.”
Merkley’s candidacy would have been a long-shot bid against some of the most famous names in Democratic politics.
Long a progressive darling, Merkley rose to national prominence as the only senator to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. After Sanders lost, Merkley saw an opportunity to claim some — if not all — of the senator’s coveted base of support.
But he would have been far from the only candidate fighting for what’s become known as the “Sanders wing” of the Democratic Party. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Kamala Harris, D-Calif.; and Cory Booker, D-N.J., have all staked a claim to a share of the liberal base.
“To win these battles we need both strong leadership in the Oval Office and strong leadership in the Senate,” Merkley said. “I believe that there are Democrats now in the presidential race who are speaking to the importance of tackling the big challenges that we face.”
During the first week of his campaign, aides to Sanders announced that he would raised $10 million, underscoring his still-strong hold over liberals in the party. Even before Sanders entered the race, Merkley had already raised doubts about whether he could build the kind of operation needed to run successfully in such a crowded primary field.
“You would really have to build a vast operation to be competitive given the design of our primary system,” he told Oregon Public Broadcasting earlier this year, “and that would require an all-out effort. And so it’s balancing that effort against putting all my efforts in through the Senate.”
The mild-mannered, 62-year-old lawmaker saw his profile rise last June, when he tried to enter a federal detention center in Texas that was holding immigrant children. A videotape of officials calling the police in response to his unannounced visit went viral, racking up more than 1 million views in a day and getting aired on national news. About two weeks later, Merkley later received permission to tour the same facility.
He spent the midterms visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Through his Blue Wave Project political action committee, Merkley endorsed a series of midterm candidates, including nearly two dozen in key presidential primary states and hired some staff in early primary states.
The son of a mill worker and a homemaker, Merkley grew up largely in a working-class neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, and was the first person in his family to graduate from college. He had his first experience with national politics when he interned for Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, a moderate Republican.
After working in Washington, he returned to Portland and became executive director of the city’s Habitat for Humanity before being elected to the Oregon Legislature in 1998.
In 2008 he defeated a Republican incumbent to win Hatfield’s former seat, riding into the Senate on the wave of President Barack Obama’s White House win.
In the Senate, he’s championed environmental causes, ending the war in Afghanistan, Wall Street reform and same-sex marriage, pushing for passage of the Equality Act, legislation that would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
By running for president, Merkley would have been giving up the opportunity for a third term in the Senate. Late last year, he informally asked Oregon lawmakers to change an existing law prohibiting candidates from being on the ballot for two offices — in his case, the U.S. Senate and the presidency — in the same year. His requests were rebuffed: “It doesn’t appear that there is a consensus to make this move at this time and I’m completely fine with that,” he tweeted in early December.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.