
 
 Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland, participates in the first Democratic presidential debate in October in Las Vegas. (Photo by Josh Haner/Bloomberg) 
 
 The struggling campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley took out a $500,000 loan in December to stay solvent and has had some staff working without pay, aides confirmed Sunday. 
 
 The loan was disclosed in a filing with the Federal Election Commission that also showed O’Malley’s fundraising during the past quarter to be a mere fraction of that posted by his two Democratic rivals, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 
 
 O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, reported receipts of $1.5 million, including the loan, during the three-month period ending Dec. 31, compared to $37 million for Clinton and $33.6 million for Sanders. 
 
 [O’Malley’s presidential campaign is perilously close to financial collapse] 
 
 The loan was secured following O’Malley’s decision to participate in the public financing system, which provides matching funds for contributions of $250 or less but limits how much a candidate can spend overall and on individual state primaries and caucuses. In recent presidential cycles, most candidates have opted not to participate in the system because of those limits. 
 
 O’Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris said that O’Malley has received $900,000 in federal matching fund payments since Jan. 1, which aren’t reflected on the newly released report, and that the $500,000 loan has been paid off in full. 
 
 In November, O’Malley announced that he was redeploying much of his staff from his national headquarters in Baltimore to Iowa and other early states. 
 
 Morris said that some of the staff that remained in Baltimore, on both junior and senior levels, decided to forgo pay and continue working for O’Malley, a move she said “says a lot about the loyalty that he inspires in the campaign.” 
 
 It was not immediately clear how many staff were working without pay. 
 
 The report showed that as of Dec. 31, O’Malley had only about $169,000 in the bank and more than $35,000 in unpaid bills in addition to the $500,000 loan. 
 
 The disclosures came on the eve of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. O’Malley has lagged far behind Clinton and Sanders in recent polls. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201602/140/1155968404_4733098595001_4733037136001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Mike Huckabee suspends his 2016 campaign 
 
 Mike Huckabee suspended his bid for the Republican nomination, ending a second run that overshadowed by other candidates in the former Arkansas governor’s social-conservative lane. 
 
 Huckabee’s announcement concludes a campaign that was not nearly as prominent as his previous run at the Republican nomination in 2008, where he won eight states, including the Iowa caucus. 
 
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 In 2016, Huckabee struggled to consistently stay on the main stage in Republican presidential debates, never raised more than $15 million at one time, and failed to rally the same evangelical support he won in his last presidential run. One of the most conspicuous blows to his campaign came when Bob Vander Plaats endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, denying Huckabee a critical ally in the contest to win over Iowa’s evangelicals. 
 
 Internally, Huckabee’s team suffered staffing bumps. In December 2015 Alice Stewart, Huckabee’s communications director, departed due to divergent visions with other staffers on the direction of the campaign and the press shop. Stewart, like Vander Plaats, joined up with Cruz. 
 
 Near the end of Huckabee’s campaign, amid lackluster polling nationally (he never averaged at 10 percent nationally) and in all of the early primary states, he opted to throw all of his chips in in Iowa, cutting the salaries of senior staff and directing most of the campaign’s team and resources to a last ditch push there. Huckabee and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former governor’s daughter and campaign manager, said that if he didn’t perform well there the campaign was unlikely to continue. ||||| FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley speaks during a campaign stop at the Tilton Diner in Tilton, N.H. O'Malley is ending his... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley speaks during a campaign stop at the Tilton Diner in Tilton, N.H. O'Malley is ending his bid for the Democratic nomination for president on Feb. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File) (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley speaks during a campaign stop at the Tilton Diner in Tilton, N.H. O'Malley is ending his bid for the Democratic nomination for president on Feb. 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Jim Cole, File) (Associated Press) FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley speaks during a campaign stop at the Tilton Diner in Tilton, N.H. O'Malley is ending his... (Associated Press) 
 
 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley ended his Democratic presidential campaign Monday midway through vote-counting in the Iowa caucuses, terminating a bid that failed to gain traction against rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. 
 
 O'Malley's decision to drop out of the race came even before a winner had been declared but as early results showed O'Malley garnering negligible support in the first primary contest. His plans were disclosed by two people familiar with his decision, who weren't authorized to discuss the decision publicly and requested anonymity. 
 
 The former two-term governor and Baltimore mayor campaigned as a can-do chief executive who had pushed through key parts of the Democratic agenda in Maryland, including gun control, support for gay marriage and an increase in the minimum wage. 
 
 A veteran of Colorado Sen. Gary Hart's presidential campaigns in the 1980s, O'Malley sought to portray himself as a fresh face for a party searching for new ideas. He launched some of the toughest critiques of the race, accusing Clinton of being on "three sides" of the gun control debate and offering "weak tea" when it came to policing Wall Street. 
 
 But the ex-governor struggled to raise money and was mired in single-digit polls for months, despite an active operation in Iowa and New Hampshire. His campaign was forced to accept federal matching funds in the fall and he failed to become Clinton's chief alternative as Sanders tapped into the party's liberal base. 
 
 Along the way, O'Malley's campaign dealt with poor timing and some bad breaks. His campaign kickoff was complicated by riots in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, bringing fresh scrutiny of O'Malley's law enforcement record as the city's mayor. 
 
 He entered the race after Sanders, who quickly generated massive crowds around the country and a loyal following in the early states. Sanders' appeal with liberals — and his online fundraising machine — gave O'Malley little room to become the face of the party's smaller anti-Clinton wing. 
 
 At a forum in Arizona last July, O'Malley's appearance was disrupted by Black Lives Matters' activists and he told the crowd, "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter," drawing heckles from the crowd. He later apologized, saying he meant to say that "we're all in this together." 
 
 O'Malley was critical of the Democratic National Committee's decision to hold only six presidential debates — including four before the Iowa caucuses — and repeatedly argued that party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was limiting the debates to benefit Clinton. 
 
 He performed well in the televised debates but it never amounted to a marked boost in poll numbers or fundraising. In the first debate, when he told Clinton a no-fly zone in Syria would be a mistake, she retorted that she was "very pleased" he had endorsed her 2008 presidential campaign, effectively neutralizing his attack. 
 
 Maryland's top lawmakers, including Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, sided with Clinton and O'Malley won the endorsement of just one member of Congress — Rep. Eric Swallwell of California. 
 
 Even his personal ties weren't persuasive. Mikulski backed Clinton again even though O'Malley had been an aide on the senator's 1986 campaign and his mother worked as a receptionist in Mikulski's office for years. Mikulski often said simply, "I'm a Hillary person." 
 
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 Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey contributed to this report. 
 
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– Martin O'Malley, running a distant third in a tight Democratic race and having collected zero delegates and less than 1% of the vote in Iowa, is the first casualty as the nation casts its first votes in the 2016 presidential election, report the AP and Talking Points Memo. O'Malley's exit was followed quickly on the Republican side by Mike Huckabee, who announced via Twitter that he was leaving the race, eight years after he won the Iowa caucuses, reports Politico. "I am officially suspending my campaign," he tweeted. "Thank you for all your loyal support." Huckabee was showing less than 2% of the vote Monday evening. O'Malley's candidacy likewise never took hold; it emerged earlier Thursday that the former Maryland governor took out a $500,000 loan in December to keep his campaign afloat, reports the Washington Post. And while speculation often centered around O'Malley's chances as a vice presidential candidate or Cabinet member, FiveThirtyEight notes that with his mediocre polling in even his home state of Maryland, his chances of being tapped for a loftier position are unlikely.