Julian Castro is no longer seeking the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination.

Castro’s announcement he will drop out of the crowded field competing for the right to challenge President Trump next year comes after he threatened to suspend his White House bid if he didn’t qualify for the November debate and laid off campaign employees in New Hampshire and South Carolina. The Democratic debate in Atlanta was the first of the monthly series Castro didn’t meet the polling threshold for, though he did receive more than 165,000 unique donations to meet the fundraising bar set by the Democratic National Committee.

If he had won the primary and the general elections, he would’ve been the first Latino president.

Despite being one of the first contenders to declare their candidacy, the Obama administration-era housing secretary and former mayor of San Antonio, 45, failed to gain momentum in the polls and fundraising.

Yet his long-shot status had one advantage: It provided him the opportunity to help push the conversation to the left. He was one of the first to call for President Trump’s impeachment and led in proposing a comprehensive immigration plan.

After raising his profile by confronting fellow Texan Beto O’Rourke over O’Rourke’s stance against decriminalizing border crossings at the opening debates in Miami, Castro was criticized for taking a veiled swipe at Joe Biden’s age during the September round in Houston. The exchange, in which he asked the former vice president and Democratic front-runner whether he was “forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago,” resulted in Congressional Hispanic Caucus member Rep. Vicente Gonzalez revoking his endorsement of Castro in favor of Biden.

“I wouldn’t do it differently,” Castro said. “That was not a personal attack.”

Castro, whose invitation to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention drew comparisons to former President Barack Obama, also received scrutiny after his younger twin brother, Rep. Joaquin Castro, tweeted out the names of people who had donated the maximum amount to Trump’s reelection campaign.

“I believe that Americans have the right to freely associate. I also believe that that’s public information,” Julian Castro said.