Martin O’Malley, Mike Huckabee end presidential campaigns

After failing to gain traction in the first-in-the nation Iowa caucuses, two candidates dropped out of the presidential race Monday night – former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on the GOP side and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on the Democratic side.

Huckabee, who won the 2008 Iowa GOP caucuses, staked his 2016 campaign on re-igniting the flames of his 2008 performance in the caucuses but couldn’t pick up speed. Huckabee registered just under 2 percent of the vote.

Huckabee announced his campaign’s suspension in a tweet, saying, “Thank you all for your loyal support.”

“He is going to continue to push for the issues he believes, but right now this is about thanking his staff and supporters and being with his friends and family and see what doors will open next,” Hogan Gidley, Huckabee’s spokesman told CNN .Gidley also told CNN Huckabee is “not even thinking about an endorsement at this time.”

He performed well in the televised debates but it never amounted to a marked boost in poll numbers or fundraising. In the first debate, when he told Clinton a no-fly zone in Syria would be a mistake, she retorted that she was “very pleased” he had endorsed her 2008 presidential campaign, effectively neutralizing his attack.

Maryland’s top lawmakers, including Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, sided with Clinton and O’Malley won the endorsement of just one member of Congress – Rep. Eric Swallwell of California.

Even his personal ties weren’t persuasive. Mikulski backed Clinton again even though O’Malley had been an aide on the senator’s 1986 campaign and his mother worked as a receptionist in Mikulski’s office for years. Mikulski often said simply, “I’m a Hillary person.”

O’Malley polled a distant third place to Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders throughout the race. Initial results from the caucuses so far show he trailed far behind the other candidates.

“In a tough, unprecedented year, O’Malley spent more time in Iowa than any other candidate and remained the most accessible. He ran an energetic and honorable campaign — leading the field with the most bold, progressive policy proposals, and he successfully pushed the other candidates on gun safety, immigration and climate policy,” an O’Malley source said.

O’Malley made immigration reform, gun control and taking on Wall Street key issues of his campaign. In addition to having low poll numbers, O’Malley had trouble fundraising, and took out a loan in order to keep his campaign afloat heading into the Iowa caucus Monday night.

A populist but no Democrat, he did not endorse a minimum-wage increase, instead calling for policies encouraging a “maximum wage” for workers. But he did align himself with labor interests in criticizing “unbalanced trade deals” and describing President Barack Obama’s immigration policy as a way to “import low-wage labor, undercut American workers and drive wages lower than the Dead Sea.”

Huckabee has boasted that in Arkansas politics, he found success in “challenging the deeply entrenched political machine that ran this state. It was tough sledding, but I learned how to govern and how to lead.” An introductory video about the governor who fought “the Clinton machine” made clear he meant Bill and Hillary. Bill Clinton was governor before Huckabee, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now vying for the Democratic nomination for president.