Larry Lessig ends his campaign for the Democratic nomination
Larry Lessig announced in a video Monday that he's ending his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.
"I must today end my campaign for the Democratic nomination and turn to the question of how best to continue to press for this reform now," he said in a more than 4-minute-long video posted on YouTube.
Lessig launched his campaign in September and said he would use the platform to push for campaign finance reform.
But on Monday, he said qualifying for the Democratic debates was an "essential step" to his campaign and said it was his only chance to make campaign finance reform a 2016 issue. Last week, he said the Democratic Party changed its rules for getting onto the debate stage.
"Until this week, the rule was three polls, finding me at 1 percent in the 6 weeks prior to the debate. Last week, we began to get close," he said. "Under the new rule, the standard is three polls at least 6 weeks before the debate....Under this new rule, I'm just shut out."
"Under the new rule, unless we can time-travel, there is no way that I will qualify," he said.
Lessig's decision comes a few weeks after he pressed NBC for equal coverage time after he felt that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton received more attention.
Lessig is a constitutional law and ethics professor at Harvard Law School.