Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro and Sen. Kamala Harris may have decided to exit the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, but self-help author Marianne Williamson is holding on—even though she recently fired her entire campaign staff, WMUR and CNBC reports.
Williamson, who once had 45 people working to get her behind the desk in the Oval Office, has had no staff since Tuesday.
“It’s amazing what you can do with volunteers,” the millionaire Democratic candidate and self-help author wrote in a statement.
“The point of my candidacy has been to tell the truth and that does not cost money,” Williamson wrote to supporters. “Forging a new path for campaigns is going to be necessary, if we’re ever to forge a new path for our country.”
While Williamson’s spiritual take issues and her “politics of love” have raised eyebrows, she has made important points about reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States.
“The issue of reparations is not a fringe notion. Germany has paid over $89 Billion to Jewish organizations since the end of WW2 and, while they do not erase the horror of the Holocaust, reparations have gone far towards establishing reconciliation between Germany and the Jews of Europe,” Williamson wrote in her platform. “Similarly, in 1988 Ronald Reagan signed the American Civil Liberties Act assigning between $20,000 to $22,000 to surviving prisoners of the Japanese internment camps during WW2. The idea that a people which has wronged another people should then pay economic restitution as payment for that wrong, is a civilized notion long considered reasonable.”
Williamson has struggled with gaining traction with voters, rarely rising to 1% support in national polls.