Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York, abruptly ended his campaign for Congress on Tuesday, saying voters were apparently “looking for another option” and that his time in electoral politics was over for now.
Mr. de Blasio, 61, entered the race for the vacant seat in late May, hoping to revive his career after eight years as mayor and several months in the political wilderness. The newly drawn House seat covers parts of Lower Manhattan and part of the brownstone Brooklyn he has called home and represented for decades.
But as he crisscrossed the district — touting his universal preschool program and sometimes campaigning in gym pants — Mr. de Blasio struggled to overcome low approval ratings from his days as mayor, even among his old base of support. Polls, including one commissioned by his campaign, have shown him underperforming in a crowded field of a dozen other Democrats, and he has watched former allies and donors support younger challengers.
In an unusually candid video posted on his Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon announcing his decision, Mr. de Blasio openly grappled with his unpopularity and unspecified “mistakes.”
“I listened very carefully to people,” he said. “And it’s clear to me when it comes to this congressional district, people are looking for another option, and I respect that.”
Mr. de Blasio, who ran a disastrous 2020 presidential campaign and was hesitant to run for governor this year, said it was “time to leave electoral politics” and suggested he would take time to recalibrate his approach after the reception he received during the campaign.
He joins an unbroken line of New York City mayors dating back more than a century who have struggled to win higher or even parallel office after their time at City Hall.
“I also admit that I made mistakes,” he said. “I want to do better in the future. I want to learn from these mistakes. It was a humbling experience at times, but it was a healthy experience.”
Neil Quatra, a strategist for Mr. de Blasio, said the former mayor made the decision to step down late Monday after a private poll commissioned by the campaign showed an extremely difficult road ahead.
“It was clear that we were dealing with something much bigger than any one issue or dynamic,” he said.
Mr. de Blasio did not immediately endorse another candidate in the race. Among those running in the Aug. 23 Democratic primary are Rep. Mondair Jones, who moved to the district this summer from suburban Westchester; Assemblymembers Yuh-Lyin Niu of Manhattan and Jo Ann Simon of Brooklyn; Carlina Rivera, Manhattan City Councilwoman; Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who helped build the impeachment case against Donald J. Trump; and Elizabeth Holtzman, the former congresswoman, district attorney and city inspector.
Mr. de Blasio has not said what he will do next, although he said in an interview in May that before entering the race he had planned to do television political commentary and potentially teach. He also faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid debt related to previous campaigns.
Still, there was little sympathy for Mr. de Blasio on Tuesday, especially among those who messed with him while he was mayor.
“The former mayor was a divisive force in the city at a time when we needed a leader to unite us,” said Catherine Wild, president of the Partnership for New York City, an influential business group. “Obviously the voters in District 10 didn’t want to give him another pulpit from which to rail against those who disagreed with his political ideology.”
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