New Westminster-Burnaby MP Peter Julian has dropped his bid to replace federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair this fall.
The MP made the announcement Thursday, saying he couldn’t secure enough donations to continue on.
He told the Record his team raised more than $80,000 over six months, but to run a national campaign, a candidate needs between $500,000 and one million dollars.
“Most of that (money) came from folks in New Westminster and Burnaby, who are tremendously supportive, but we needed to have donations from other parts of Canada, and they weren’t coming in,” he said.
Julian was the first candidate to throw his hat into the ring.
“There’s no guarantee. We had a financial plan and a game plan,” he said. “What you can do is put a best-case scenario and work hard to achieve it.”
He noted a highlight from his campaign was getting his party to take a position on Kinder Morgan.
“The federal party has always kind of avoided the issue and we put it out there when we launched in February, and all of the candidates have come to our position,” he said of his opposition to the pipeline project. “Tuition fees as well and campaigning to eliminate them.”
The MP said he’s looking forward to being back in the riding and will be endorsing one of the four remaining candidates in a few weeks.
“I’m glad we went in. We fought a good fight; we changed the party in a number of ways,” he said. “I know moving forward how much money it takes in the final 90 days. You need to be very prudent and not undertake financial obligations that are beyond your means.”
The remaining leadership hopefuls are Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton, Guy Caron and Jagmeet Singh
