Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who campaigned for president on a promise to fix a broken Washington, ended his bid for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday after a dismal showing in the New Hampshire primary.
Mr. Bennet had staked all his hopes on New Hampshire, holding 50 town hall events there in the 10 weeks leading up to the primary and campaigning exclusively there in the final stretch, even on the night of the Iowa caucuses.
Mr. Bennet, 55, a former school superintendent, managed to raise his national profile during his bid, but he paddled along while others sped ahead. His bet was that a grass-roots campaign could lift him: dozens of town hall events, unscreened audience questions, direct contact with voters. But he failed to register in polls, which kept him out of every debate after July, and he crisscrossed primary states with a staff far smaller than some of his opponents.
He was also hampered by his late entry: He joined a Democratic field that had already swelled to 20 candidates. Just as he was set to declare his candidacy, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and paused to undergo surgery before announcing a run for the White House.
Mr. Bennet took a middle path in the race, and often warned that the Democratic Party was at risk of moving too far to the left. On health care, he touted his Medicare-X health plan, which would build on the Affordable Care Act but not upend the current system, a contrast to more progressive proposals. On immigration, he opposed decriminalizing illegal border crossings, while candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who has since left the race, said they supported such a move.
He argued that his “Real Deal” agenda was more broadly appealing than other candidates’ platforms, and leaned hard on an endorsement from James Carville, the lead strategist behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, who said he was scared that the other Democratic candidates could not defeat President Trump.
Mr. Bennet’s pitch was, more than anything, a return to normalcy. “If you elect me president, I promise you won’t have to think about me for two weeks at a time,” he tweeted in August.
He had a small breakout moment in early January, before his campaign announcement, when he gave a fiery speech on the Senate floor, excoriating his Republican colleague Ted Cruz and shouting repeatedly as he accused Mr. Cruz of shedding “crocodile tears” over unpaid government workers. The speech was viewed millions of times online, but it failed to gain him the support he needed.
Mr. Bennet’s maternal grandparents were immigrants who fled the Warsaw Ghetto, eventually moving to New York. As a senator, he was best known for helping to craft a sweeping immigration reform bill in 2013. The legislation, which would have provided more than $46 billion to bolster border security while also carving a path to citizenship, passed in the Senate but never made it to the House.
Mr. Bennet’s younger brother, James, is the editorial page editor of The New York Times. Last year, The Times said in a statement that James Bennet would recuse himself “from any work generated by the opinion desk related to the 2020 presidential election.” The arrangement was expected to last for as long as Michael Bennet was a candidate in the race.