THE crowded field of candidates to be the next president of the United States narrowed by one yesterday with the surprise announcement by Mark Warner that he would not be running in 2008.

Mr Warner had emerged over the past year as the most widely tipped alternative for Democrats, who fear that Senator Hillary Clinton is too polarising a figure to win back the White House.

However, yesterday, in a hastily arranged press conference at a hotel in Richmond, Virginia, Mr Warner said that he was putting his family first. “This weekend made clear what I’d been thinking about for many weeks, that while politically this appears to be the right time for me to take the plunge, at this point I want to have a real life.” The former Virginia Governor acknowledged that his chance might never come again. But neither, he said, would moments such as celebrating his father’s 81st birthday or taking his eldest daughter on a college tour, which he had enjoyed sharing with his family in the past week.

Mr Warner, 51, said that his wife, Lisa, and his three daughters, aged 16, 15 and 12, had always “had a healthy amount of scepticism” about the price that they would have to pay if he ran for president. But he added that, if necessary, they “would have been willing to buckle down and support the effort. I love them all and appreciate their faith in me.”

Some Democrats suggested that he may have other, even more personal, reasons for pulling out. One well-known party figure said: “It’s strange, isn’t it? He certainly wasn’t shaping like a candidate agonising over whether he should run. He was due to speak in Iowa today.”

Indeed, Mr Warner’s scheduled trip would have been his seventh in only two years to Iowa, where the Democrat caucuses have long been the first date on the presidential nomination calendar. He also visited New Hampshire — which will hold the first primary in 2008 — last summer, as well as touring South Carolina and Nevada in September after they were given early slots in the timetable.

An embryonic campaign team had raised millions of dollars for a presidential bid, while Mr Warner, who has a personal fortune from his mobile phone company estimated at about $200 million (£100,000), would have been able to finance much of the cost himself.

His appeal was that of a centrist who had not only won the governorship in Republican-leaning Virginia, but also left the state with a balanced budget and personal approval ratings in the mid-1970s.

Some Democrats yesterday suggested that Mr Warner’s abrupt decision to quit had left Mrs Clinton even more certain of winning the Democratic nomination. Others suggested that it might make her task harder because her opponents would now be better able to unite behind a single “anyone but Hillary” candidate. On current form, this is likely to be John Edwards, the former vice-presidential candidate.

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