Romeo Saganash drops NDP leadership bid

Quebec MP Romeo Saganash hasn't built enough support to win the NDP leadership and is withdrawing from the race, he announced Friday.

The former Cree leader saida lack of financial support and demands on his time were the mainreasons for bowing out.

"My mother, sisters and brothers and my children all need more attention than I have been able to provide", Saganash said in his announcement."I am unable to devote enough time to them, my constituents or my party and run the kind of campaign that I would like to run."

Saganash's elderly mother livesnear Waswanipi in northern Quebec, where Saganash wasborn and raised until he was taken from the community and sent to a residential school. He has three children in their late teens and early 20s.

But Saganash acknowledged that a campaign can't easily be won without the funds to support it.

The 49-year-old MP, who was first elected last May,saidhe received "a warm reception and support from party members, but it is impossible to run a winning campaign as the favourite second choice. People send you good wishes, but they don't send their money."

He lagged far behind the remaining seven candidates in the competition to replace Jack Layton, who died of cancer in August.

No immediate endorsement

According to fourth-quarter financial figures that cover the period up to the end of December, Saganash hadraised just $17,552 from donors,ahead only of Niki Ashton. Brian Topp, the NDP's former president and the first to announce his candidacy, was the first place fundraiser, raking in $156,597.

Saganash is a well-known aboriginal leaderand he said there had been a tremendous reaction among that community to his run for the leadership, but that reaching aboriginal communities across the country "required an infrastructure that was impossible to build in a single campaign."

The MP forAbitibi-Baie James-Nunavik-Eeyou isthe second person toquit the leadership race. Robert Chisholm, a Nova Scotia MP,pulled outin December because his French was not improving quickly enough.

Saganash, who is fluent in English,French, Cree and Spanish,is notimmediately endorsing anyone, but with six weeks left in the race the other campaigns will likely wastelittle time trying to get him on board.

"I will endorse whichever candidate can best move the vision forward that I have for our party," he said earlierin a news release.

In an interview on CBC's C'est La Vie earlier this week, Saganash spoke to host Bernard St-Laurent about balancing his duties in Ottawa and in his riding, with his personal life and leadership campaign.

He is close with his mother and mentioned that when he last visited hershe cried when he left, the first time in his long career thatshe had ever been so emotional.

"She said, 'I have to accept the fact that I will have to share you for the rest of my life,' and she wept after saying that," Saganash told St-Laurent. "I cried for at least 70 kilometres of driving because there's a lot in that statement."

Less crowded stage for Sunday's debate

Saganash is quitting just ahead of the next leadership debate on Sunday, which is being held on familiar turf for Saganash, Quebec City.

His previous jobs as deputy grand chief and director of Quebec relations and international affairs of the Grand Council of the Crees meant he spent a lot of time in the province's capital.

He earned a reputation as a solid negotiator through his work on a landmark agreement between the Cree and government of Quebec and worked internationally helping to write the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Niki Ashton, Nathan Cullen, Paul Dewar, Thomas Mulcair, Peggy Nash, Brian Topp and Martin Singh will have one less competitor on stage when they face off during the next debate.

Saganash was the second person to enter the leadership race late last summer, after Topp, the NDP's former president.

The leadership contest that began in September will culminate with a convention in Toronto on March 24.