Holder passes

Former AG Holder passes on 2020 bid

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

Former Attorney General Eric Holder will not run for president in 2020, he said Monday, and will instead focus on efforts to elect the eventual Democratic presidential nominee as well as Democrats running in state and local elections.

Holder, who led former President Barack Obama’s Justice Department for six years, had long been considered a possible 2020 contender, although his name was not often mentioned among those of frontrunners like Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Holder wrote that he will approach 2020 with the knowledge that congressional redistricting is set to take place the next year, though he said Democrats' "primary objective" should be "making sure a Democratic president is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021."

“What happens in those races over the next two years will shape the next decade of our politics,” he wrote. “Our fight to end gerrymandering is about electing leaders who actually work for the interests of the people they are supposed to represent. I will do everything I can to ensure that the next Democratic president is not hobbled by a House of Representatives pulled to the extremes by members from gerrymandered districts.”

Holder’s op-ed also laid out the criteria he says the 2020 Democratic nominee should meet — noting that “I will not be shy about sharing my thoughts” throughout the primary process — which read as an item by item rejection of President Donald Trump, who goes unnamed in the piece.

The former attorney general did not endorse any of the declared 2020 contenders on Monday, but said that with a still-growing primary field of over a dozen candidates so far, Democratic voters will be presented with "a host of good options."

The next Democratic nominee for president, Holder said, needs to champion “transformative policies” on issues like the economy, climate change, voting rights, immigration and criminal justice reform. But he also cautioned the electorate to “be wary of purists” in a primary field that spans the spectrum of the ideological left.

Since leaving the Justice Department in 2015, Holder launched the National Redistricting Action Fund, aimed at combating gerrymandering and putting an emphasis on the 2021 redrawing of new districts. That effort recently merged with Obama’s political group Organizing for Action and became the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, allowing Holder to harness the power of the Obama team’s list of supporters.