Hillary Clinton put to rest lingering speculation Monday night that she might launch another White House bid but vowed to remain active in politics, telling a local television station in New York that “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m not running, but I’m going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe,” Clinton said in an interview with News 12. “I want to be sure that people understand I’m going to keep speaking out. . . . What’s at stake in our country, the kind of things that are happening right now are deeply troubling to me.”
Clinton, a Democrat who lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump despite winning the popular vote, said she does not think she will run for any other elected office in the future, such as mayor of New York or governor of New York.
Clinton has said previously that she did not plan to join the 2020 presidential field but hedged enough that speculation endured about a possible change of heart.
Asked at a live event in New York in October by Recode’s Kara Swisher about a 2020 bid, Clinton initially said “no” and then paused.
After Swisher noted her hesitation, Clinton added: “Well, I’d like to be president.”
“I think, hopefully, when we have a Democrat in the Oval Office in January of 2021, there’s going to be so much work to be done,” she added.
In January, former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in a television interview that he had no reason to believe that the former senator from New York and former secretary of state would run again for the White House.
“I take her at her word,” Podesta told CNN. “She’s not running for president. We’ve got a lot of great candidates out there right now, and I think the Democratic primary is going to be a spirited one with a lot of great ideas coming forward.”
So far, 14 other Democrats have stepped forward to launch bids.
