Pete Buttigieg, the nation's first openly gay major presidential candidate, on Sunday ended his historic bid for the White House.

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana returned to his hometown to announce his decision. The candidate was introduced by his husband, Chasten Buttigieg.

“After a year of going everywhere, meeting everyone, defying every expectation, seeking every vote, the truth is that the path has narrowed to a close for our candidacy, if not for our cause,” Buttigieg said.

“We have a responsibility to consider the effect of remaining in this race any further. Our goal has always been to help unify Americans to defeat [President] Donald Trump and to win the era for our values. And so we must recognize that at this point in the race the best way to keep faith with those goals and ideals is to step aside and help bring our party and our country together.”

“So tonight, I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the presidency. I will no longer seek to be the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, but I will do everything in my power to ensure that we have a new Democratic president come January,” he said to cheers and chants of “2024!” from the audience.

Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa caucuses early last month, then placed second in the New Hampshire primary. But defeats in Nevada last week and South Carolina on Saturday showed that Buttigieg was failing to attract support among minorities, a crucial demographic among Democrats.

Fred Karger, who was annoyed at the media throughout much of Buttigieg's campaign for failing to point out that he was the nation's first openly gay presidential candidate in 2012, congratulated Buttigieg, his husband Chasten and the “entire campaign team on an incredible campaign!”

The LGBTQ Victory Fund, which had endorsed Buttigieg's presidential bid, simply tweeted: “Thank you, @PeteButtigieg.”