Alice Madden said Friday that she is ending her run for U.S. Senate, becoming the latest candidate to do so as a result of John Hickenlooper’s high-profile entry into the race.

Madden, a former Colorado House majority leader and Obama-era Energy Department official, said she must have surgery soon and was preparing to take two weeks off to recover, so “the timing felt right.”

Her exit from the race was first reported by The Colorado Independent.

“I had done an analysis that I had a path to victory if I could get progressive women and environmental groups to endorse, but after John (Hickenlooper) got in, those avenues to victory seemed like they were closing,” Madden said in an interview.

Madden’s exit from the Democratic contest to take on Republican Sen. Cory Gardner decreases the already-slim odds that Colorado will elect its first woman senator this cycle. While six of the nine remaining Democratic candidates are women, the race’s two leading candidates are men: Hickenlooper and Andrew Romanoff.

“I definitely did think it was the year that we had a great shot for that,” Madden said of electing a woman.

“In John’s case, for whatever reason, people think he’s a surer bet than anyone else in the race. … I think that anyone beats (Gardner),” she added.

Madden is the fifth Democrat to leave the 2020 Senate race in the past five weeks, following Mike Johnston, John Walsh, Dan Baer and Denise Burgess. Walsh and Baer have endorsed Hickenlooper, but Madden is not endorsing anyone else in the race at this time.