With Pawar out of the race, the contest is set to intensify.
Indian American Ameya Pawar from the 47th Ward has announced that he is abruptly ending the gubernatorial run for Illinois due to the inability in leveraging fund for the state-wide campaign.
According to a statement posted by Pawar on his official website, “Without more resources, the only choices for expanding the campaign to a scope that could earn the nomination were to take on more personal debt or to cut staff. I have a young family, and we decided not to take on more personal debt right now. As to cutting staff, I simply refuse.”
Despite the presence of wealthier and better-funded rivals, Pawar announced his gubernatorial candidacy as a Democrat in January this year. He was hoping to raise substantial funds before the primary election scheduled for March 18 but, till now, the Indian American could raise only $828k from 2,526 donors.
According to the statement of Pawar, he and his supporters did their best to raise the fund for the election but, since the race for Illinois governor is set to become one of the costliest race in American history, he had to end the campaign prematurely.
Pawar had 3,200 volunteers working for him and over 10,000 signatories in his favor.
Calling off his campaign, Pawar said he is not endorsing any candidates at this particular juncture. Nevertheless, he asked his supporters to consider other Democratic colleagues as any one of them will make a fine governor.
Pawar also announced that he has launched a political action committee called “One Illinois,” that is aimed at organizing young people to propagate progressive ideas in order to fight bigotry in the name of race, class, and geography.
After announcing his decision to run for the election, Pawar had said that he wanted to cater to progressives among the Democrats in the wake of the November election debacle. According to him, the election failure was the result of a deep rift among Democrats nationwide between the party’s liberal and establishment wings.
With Pawar out of the race, the contest is set to intensify as it will now feature some of the wealthiest Democrats such as J.B. Pritzker; businessman Chris Kennedy, a member of the iconic and wealthy Massachusetts political family; and state Sen. Daniel Biss, an Evanston lawmaker who with Pawar had sought most diligently to compete for support from populist progressives.
Concluding his statement, Pawar said, “I wanted to be your nominee for governor. I gave it everything I had. But I don’t have the resources to continue in a manner that I think would both be fair to the people who work with me and would set us up to win, and I require both. But I feel the same way about the inspiration I’ve acquired to make a positive change as the Greek philosopher Plutarch did about education: It is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”