James Craig, a former police chief of Detroit, suspends his Republican bid for retiring U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow’s seat in Michigan, telling the Detroit News in an interview on Tuesday that he lacked the resources to obtain and verify the 15,000 petition signatures needed to qualify for the state’s August primary. He ended 2023 with just $28,000 on hand for his Senate campaign.

“The reality is fundraising is a challenge right now,” said the ex–police chief. His decision to leave the race follows his failed bid for governor in 2022, when he was disqualified from appearing on the ballot after he had failed to obtain enough valid petition signatures.

Craig’s exit winnows the GOP field, which now includes former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (who has the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee), businessman Sandy Pensler, and former Grand Rapids–area representative Peter Meijer, who lost his 2022 primary after voting a year earlier to impeach former president Donald Trump.

Whoever wins the Republican nomination is expected to face Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin in November. Should she secure the Democratic nomination, the GOP nominee will likely face an uphill battle to win Michigan’s open Senate seat: Slotkin raised nearly $12 million last year and had $6 million in the bank as of January 1. And even though former president Trump won Michigan in 2016, the battleground state skews blue: No Republican has won a U.S. Senate seat there in three decades.