WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will not seek reelection this year, setting up a contested primary where Texas Democrats will vote for a replacement nominee for the first time in decades.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” the Democrat wrote in a letter addressed to the American people. “And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”
Biden quickly endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the party’s presidential nominee.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote on social media. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
Biden’s extraordinary move came after a jumbled debate performance late last month where the president failed to make coherent statements and often confused his points. The debate highlighted growing concerns about his advanced age.
Biden is the first president to withdraw since Lyndon Baines Johnson, who represented Texas for two decades in Congress, announced he would pull out of the 1968 election. President Johnson surprised the nation with his statement at the end of a speech one Sunday evening in March, just days before the Wisconsin primary.
Several Texas Democratic delegates, who will help select Biden’s replacement as the party nominee, immediately placed their support behind Harris after Biden’s endorsement.
"I am fully supportive of Vice President Harris, just as President Biden indicated in his comments today. I look forward to her acceptance speech this August,” Jordan Villareal, a delegate from Denton County, said in an interview.
The party will now likely select their next nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month. It will be the first contested convention since 1968, also held in Chicago, and 273 Texas delegates will vote for their pick. Texas has the third most delegates to the national convention behind California and New York.
Among them are 159 delegates who were elected from various congressional districts at last month’s Texas Democratic Convention, with each district receiving different numbers of delegates based on its Democratic turnout in recent presidential elections. These so-called “district-level” delegates are typically rank-and-file party members who are Democratic activists.
Another 53 “at-large” delegates — representing the state as a whole — were selected at last month’s state convention, many of them also rank-and-file activists.
Texas will also send 32 “party leader and elected official” delegates. They include big city mayors, state lawmakers and various other leaders, according to the Texas Democratic Party.
The final 30 delegates are automatically selected party leaders, akin to superdelegates, that include members of the Democratic National Committee who live in Texas and the state’s entire Democratic congressional delegation.
Despite Biden’s endorsement for Harris, none of the president’s delegates are required to back her at the convention.
The Democratic National Party has not yet laid out how it would proceed with the nominating process. Jaime Harrison, DNC chair, said on social media that the party would “undertake a transparent and orderly process” that is “governed by established rules and procedures of the Party.”
Some delegates urged for the convention to remain open. Julio Salinas, a delegate from Austin, said he would prefer to have some discussion about the new nominee before the DNC.
“I would like to see it a little bit open,” he said. “There should be some talk with the delegates on how we’re going to go forward.”
He added, however, that he saw Harris as the “favorite” and would be happy with her as a nominee. Harris would have “a great shot” of defeating Trump, Salinas added, in part by turning the election back to issues like reproductive rights.
Biden’s move caught Democrats across the state by surprise. Art Pronin, a Democratic delegate from Houston, said his phone was “blowing up like crazy” within minutes of the news.
“It was the ultimate thunderbolt in politics,” he said.
Angel Carroll, a national delegate for Congressional District 17, said she was shocked by the announcement and frustrated she had to learn about the announcement on social media.
Carroll said she had many questions about the next steps heading into the Democratic National Convention next month. She had backed Biden despite calls for him to step down and had been chosen at the state convention last month to attend the convention as a delegate for Biden. Now, she said, the strategy should be to rally around Harris.
"Our best path forward is to get behind the vice president," she said. "That's what our vice president is for, to step up when the president needs them."
While she was frustrated with the decision coming so late in the campaign cycle, Carroll said her opinion of Biden has not changed.
"I thank him for his long public service and the courage that it took to step aside," she said.
Passion Jackson, a delegate from Dallas, said the news came as a complete surprise and that she felt “really sad” for Biden. Harris is “the best person we can put forward,” Jackson said, but she was also worried about Harris facing misogyny during the election.
“We’re in uncharted territory at this point,” Jackson said.” I don’t even know what to expect.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin was the first Democrat in Congress to ask Biden to withdraw from the race. A slow drumbeat of similar calls echoed Doggett for the next two weeks, including a statement from fellow Texan Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth. Other Democrats, including Dallas congressman and Senate nominee Colin Allred, avoided taking a position, though after Sunday’s announcement his campaign confirmed he was backing Harris.
“I thank President @JoeBiden for his service and his willingness to put country before self. It’s something we need more of in our politics,” Allred said on social media. “My sincere hope is that this moment brings our nation one step closer to healing, uniting and fixing our broken politics.”
Doggett, meanwhile, acknowledged that Biden’s endorsement made Harris “clearly the leading candidate,” but he said the party “should be open to all talented individuals who wish to be considered” for the nomination.
Some Texas Democrats had remained ardent supporters of Biden before the president’s Sunday announcement.
U.S. Rep. Al Green said he was “ridin’ with Joe Biden” after his debate performance, citing the president’s record on infrastructure, racial justice and health care.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who was a national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, said last week that “there was a democratic process to make him our nominee. 14 million voters reaffirmed their commitment to the Biden Harris ticket.” She added the campaign already has the infrastructure in place to win.
Escobar said in a Sunday statement that working for Biden’s campaign was the “privilege of my life” and backed Harris to be the next nominee.
“She, too, earned 14 million votes in the primary, will lead the fight for our freedoms against Trump’s Project 2025 and the MAGA movement that seeks to end our democracy,” Escobar wrote.
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, said on social media after Biden’s announcement that Democrats “pushed the most consequential President of our lifetime out” and that “Joe wasn’t the problem… dems were.”
“I know one thing, I will only work for @KamalaHarris ! If it’s anyone OTHER than her, enjoy campaign season… I hope all of my disenchanted colleagues are able to find some walking shoes and get to work because I WILL NOT!” Crockett wrote.
The president, losing in many national and battleground state polls, had hoped for a boost of energy during his debate last month, but it instead sent a shockwave of worry through his party. This came just months before Democrats planned to confirm him as the nominee at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Pressure continued to mount as the bloc of pro-withdrawal Democrats grew to more than 30 members of Congress, while congressional leaders more gently prodded the president in private discussions, according to numerous news reports. Still, Biden retained the support of a close circle of advisers and a larger group of steadfast supporters in Congress that included eight Texas Democrats.
The presidential race was thrown into yet more chaos when a gunman shot at former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The incident, being investigated as an attempted assassination, drew outrage from Texas Republicansand forced Biden to postpone a campaign stop to Austin. The horror of political violence gave rise to rallying cries of unity at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Biden’s polling, already under water in most battleground states, slipped further. Democrats fretted that the attempted assassination would lock in a Trump victory.
Harris has polled slightly better against Trump, though one poll in Texas found that Harris was slightly more unpopular than Biden in the state.