Carlos Menchaca, the City Council member from Sunset Park and Red Hook, has ended his candidacy for mayor of New York City. After revealing lackluster fundraising numbers last week and citing challenges gaining traction in a crowded field, Menchaca told Gothamist/WNYC he would exit the race on Wednesday.

He said it became a choice between fulfilling his duties as a Council member or dedicating himself to fundraising for his struggling campaign.

“I decided to put all of my energy in really fighting in the budget negotiations and close out this year as a City Council member representing those, not just vulnerable communities, but very vibrant voices in the future of the city,” he said.

Menchaca framed himself as the progressive candidate who would have corrected an imbalance of power and listened to communities who get overlooked in the world of New York City politics. A campaign launch video from October showed him walking along the Brooklyn waterfront saying, “As a gay child of immigrants, discrimination is a pain I know all too well. We need a mayor to stand up to the wealthy and powerful and put our communities first.”

But he could never get his campaign off the ground. In a March 15th report submitted to the Campaign Finance Board, Menchaca raised only $24,570 from 320 donors over the last three months, with all but $110 coming from outside New York City. Over the course of his candidacy he raised roughly $87,000 in private donations, a fraction of what the top contenders have brought in; he’s got just over $24,000 left.

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Menchaca rejected the notion that his run for mayor was not a serious campaign, noting that he tried to do much of the work alone. Many of his supporters had either lost their jobs or moved out of the city, he said, and he had no volunteers to help reach potential donors, a stark contrast to top-tier candidates who have hired seasoned strategists, organized support from advocacy groups and unions, and raised millions of dollars.

“I think some of the traditional players have the power of incumbency and they've got union support,” he told Gothamist/WNYC earlier this month. “And the only way that you can confront an engine like a union is with your own organizing that I just haven't been able to do on the ground having started so late in October.”

Yet it was his organizing skills that first brought Menchaca recognition, when he coordinated aid efforts in Red Hook during Hurricane Sandy and then successfully beat incumbent City Councilmember Sarah Gonzalez by more than a thousand votes in 2013.

In the City Council, he took a position as a progressive reformer and was no friend to the party establishment. In 2017, he beat back a well-connected challenger for a second term. But Menchaca was not able to generate the same kind of support in his run for mayor, and he also saw his popularity take a hit in the bruising fight to rezone the waterfront around Industry City.

According to some of his constituents, support for Menchaca began to erode after he refused to outright reject a massive rezoning plan that would have brought two hotels and upscale retail stores to the waterfront commercial complex. Instead, Menchaca worked with groups in the neighborhood to establish a community benefits agreement that included things like a new school. The move angered local activists who wanted the entire project stopped out of concern it would intensify gentrification.

In the end, Menchaca rejected the Industry City rezoning and the developer pulled out. But his final decision came too late for some and alienated both sides, according to several people involved in the controversy at the time.

Jeremy Kaplan, a Sunset Park resident of 10 years and part of the group called Protect Sunset Park, said he supported Menchaca in 2013 but then got turned off.

“We had to spend years protesting to get Carlos to change his mind,” he said. “I think Carlos kind of falls short of his rhetoric.” Kaplan said, adding that he did not support Menchaca’s campaign for mayor.

“When you govern, you govern for everybody. You represent everybody's voice,” Menchaca said, arguing the proposal had to go through a public review process that allowed for a range of opinions.

On the other side of the debate was Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, who wanted to negotiate with the developer and get concessions for the community. She said she considered Menchaca an idealist whose vision for how communities should influence politics comes from “a good place” but that he lacked the pragmatism needed to be an effective politician.

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“When you’re in the position of actually being the one to solve the problem for the person, you tend to have a different sense of urgency,” she said. “You’re more pragmatic about how you approach these things and I think that’s where I differ in how he approaches things.”

Menchaca’s story is rooted in very pragmatic real-world challenges. He said his political views took shape as a child living in El Paso, Texas, crossing the border into Mexico to visit family who lacked running water, gas, and electricity.

“I just got so upset, I got so mad that how is this possible?” he said. “I remember thinking we need to have one city, one international city where we can share all the resources and support each other, because I'm not the only one with cousins in Mexico.”

As one of seven children, Menchaca was raised by a single mom who used alcohol to cope with the trauma she endured from being abused by his father. “Which is why we kicked him out of the house,” he added.

He started to distance himself from his family, and their religious beliefs, when he realized he was gay.

“I never accepted Jesus Christ into my heart because I felt like if Jesus was in my heart, he would know that I was gay and then he would kill me,” he said. “And this is what I would think about as a kid.”

With the help of a fake ID, he said he found refuge in the vibrant gay bars of El Paso where he would dance and feel free. It’s there that he met an older cousin who, it turned out, was a “premier” drag queen.

“And I had this amazing relationship… with all the drag queens, and they knew that I was young and they just took care of me," he said. “I have to write a whole book about how the drag queens of El Paso saved my life in a lot of ways and gave me the opportunity to be fully expressive.”

Menchaca, who danced in their shows but said he never did drag himself, credited these life experiences with making him more open to people in his community here in New York, and better able to connect to their experiences.

“Whether it's an immigration case, whether it's a domestic violence case, whether it's an ACS case, whether it's whatever,” he said.

Even though his bid for mayor was unsuccessful, Menchaca said he wanted to keep passing on the “chutzpah” he felt after unseating an incumbent in 2013. When he completes his second City Council term at the end of the year, he said he would like to run for public office again.