A Democrat and progressive activist who waged a grassroots campaign in a red Inland congressional district last year announced this week she won’t run in 2020.

“I have been doing some serious evaluating of my ability to continue to run and have determined something very clearly: I would have made an incredible legislator, but I do not make a good politician,” Julia Peacock wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday, July 9.

“The physical and emotional toll this last 2 1/2 years has taken on me has been quite substantial.”

She added that instead of boosting her in 2020, the results from last year have become a political albatross.

“I… naively believed that we would have more momentum moving into 2020 after doing so very well in such a very red district, but the opposite has proven to be true.

“Too many people believe that I’m a failure because I couldn’t win, so they’ve taken their support – financial and volunteerism – and gone. While I know, putting some of the right people and things in place, that we might be able to rebuild, I do not have the energy to begin again.”

Peacock also posted a YouTube video explaining her decision not to seek a rematch against Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, in California’s 42nd Congressional District, which covers much of western Riverside County.

A first-time candidate and public high school teacher who lives outside Corona, Peacock got 43.5 percent of the vote last November against Calvert, a conservative and the Inland Empire’s longest-serving congressman. It was the highest percentage for a Calvert challenger since Democrat Bill Hedrick got 48.8 percent of the vote in 2008.

Peacock’s campaign relied on volunteer enthusiasm – she boasted that her team wrote thousands of voter postcards and knocked on thousands of doors – to make up for a lack of outside support from the Democratic establishment and liberal groups focused on flipping GOP-held House seats in Orange County, which now has an all-blue congressional delegation.

She announced plans to run in 2020 not long after the November election. But as with 2018, Peacock faced long odds in a district where Republicans hold a roughly 8 percentage point edge in voter registration. In 2016, Donald Trump won the district – Corona, Norco, Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Canyon Lake, Menifee, Murrieta, and part of Temecula – by 12 percentage points.

Calvert raised about $195,000 between January and March of this year and had more than $573,000 in cash on hand as of March 31. Peacock raised about $24,000 between January and June 30 and, at the end of last month, had just under $4,700 in the bank.

Peacock’s departure from the race leaves Regina Marston and Liam O’Mara as the only Democrats to file papers to challenge Calvert in 2020. A Republican, David Fritz, also has filed a statement of candidacy in the 42nd.