Every weekday, Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing provides a curated account of the most important news in the 2020 presidential election.
January 30, 2019: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign manager and consulting firm are leaving her campaign after a kickoff event in Hawaii this weekend. Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R) and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) both announced they were not running for president.
Share the latest from the campaign trail.
   
Democrats
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Former Rep. John Delaney, who has traveled to all 99 counties in Iowa, earned endorsements from the chairmen of three Democratic committees in counties that supported Donald Trump with 65 percent of the vote or more.
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Campaign manager Rania Batrice and consulting firm Revolution Messaging will depart from Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign after her kickoff in Hawaii Feb. 2. Gabbard is expected to rely on her sister, Vrindavan, in the interim.
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CNN said its televised town hall with Sen. Kamala Harris Monday “was the most watched cable news single candidate election town hall ever.”
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Venture for America founder Andrew Yang returns to Iowa Wednesday. Since becoming a candidate in November 2017, he has visited the state seven times.
On the Cusp: Tracking Potential Candidates
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Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (D) said he supported a Green New Deal based on an “achievable” plan, beginning with converting jobs in coal to renewable energy. “I'm a little bit tired of listening to things that are pie in the sky, that we never are going to pass or never are going to afford,” he said during a speech at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) is not running for president, according to her former campaign chairman John Podesta. “She said she’s not running for president. … I take her at her word,” he said.
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Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R) announced that he will not run for president. He is joining CBS News as a contributor, instead. “I have always said that I do hope that there is a Republican who challenges the president in the primary. I still hope that somebody does, but that somebody won't be me. I will not be a candidate,” Flake said.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) also announced that he will not run for president. “It may be out of vogue today, but I kind of believe that whenever possible, you should finish the job that you set out to do,” Garcetti said.
- In an interview on NPR, Howard Schultz (I) called Elizabeth Warren’s (D) ultra-millionaire tax proposal ridiculous. “[W]hen I see Elizabeth Warren come out with a ridiculous plan of taxing wealthy people a surtax of 2 percent because it makes a good headline or sends out a tweet when she knows for a fact that's not something that’s ever gonna be passed, this is what's wrong,” he said. “You can’t just attack these things in a punitive way by punishing people.”
- Warren tweeted in response, “What's ‘ridiculous’ is billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else. The top 0.1%, who'd pay my #UltraMillionaireTax, own about the same wealth as 90% of America. It's time for change.”
Polls
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In a Marquette University poll of 800 registered Wisconsin voters, 57 percent of respondents said they would definitely or probably vote for someone other than Trump. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said they would definitely or probably vote for him. Trump won Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2016. The poll’s margin of error was 3.9 percentage points.
What We’re Reading
Flashback: January 30, 2015
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and future U.S. senator from Utah, announced that he would not run for president. “I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee. In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case,” he said in the statement.
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