© 2026 ABC News

After parting ways with the campaign, Patricia Ewing, Williamson’s former communications director, told ABC News that “from a fundraising perspective, the campaign was no longer viable.”

\"PHOTO:
Jack Kurtz/ZUMAPRESS.com via Newscom, FILE
PHOTO: Marianne Williamson talks to a group of about 50 Iowans during a campaign appearance at the Central Public Library in Des Moines, Nov. 21, 2019.
>

The celebrity spiritual adviser-turned-2020 candidate put love and peace at the center of her campaign, releasing plans to create a Department of Peace and a Department of Children and Youth.

Williamson was also the first candidate to call for reparations for African American slave descendants and spoke candidly about her atypical presidential bid, touting her lack of experience as a strength.

\"I challenge the idea that the people who got us in this ditch are the only ones who can get us out of it,” Williamson said.

She also faced criticism for some of her views and faced criticism over her stance on vaccinations, once issuing an apology after calling vaccine mandates “draconian’ and “Orwellian.

Williamson appeared on 'The View' in June and sought to clarify her position on childhood vaccinations saying that while she supports the concept of vaccines she doesn't support the idea of anyone on either side of the debate mandating what people should do.

\"I understand the issue of public safety must come first. But I also understand that we must have a balance between public safety and the issues of individual freedom,\" she told the show's hosts and said that she doesn’t trust the “propaganda on either side.”

\"PHOTO:
Ben Margot/AP, FILE
PHOTO: Marianne Williamson, 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, gestures while speaking at the Democratic National Committee's summer meeting, Aug. 23, 2019, in San Francisco.
>

The presidential run wasn't Williamson's first attempt to enter the political fray.

In 2014, Williamson ran as an independent to fill a seat in California’s 33rd Congressional District. She said in a campaign press release that she decided to run for Congress because \"I believe America has gone off the democratic rails. A toxic brew of shrinking civil liberties expanded corporate influence and domestic surveillance is poisoning our democracy.\"

She finished fourth, despite having raised about $2 million dollars and gaining endorsements from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Nicole Richie. Alanis Morrisette even wrote her campaign theme song.

She told ABC News of that congressional race, \"What I vastly underestimated was the significance of the fact that I knew nothing about running a political campaign.\"

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