Tenants-rights activist and former mayoral, gubernatorial, and (briefly) presidential candidate Jimmy McMillan, best known for his affiliation with the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, which he founded, announced today his retirement from politics.

Gawker endorsed McMillan in his 2005 mayoral bid, despite some ambivalence over comments he had made in an interview alleging that the rent, which even ten years ago was too high, was so because of—at least in part—the Jews. McMillan lost that election, and again in 2009.

The next year, he turned his sights on higher office, running for governor.

Despite a spectacular performance in the gubernatorial debate that year, he lost again, winning about 41,000 votes out of more than four million cast, according to the New York Times.

Now, after a final failed gubernatorial bid in 2014, McMillan has announced his retirement (sic throughout):

McMillan a disable Vietnam Veteran has been spending his own money a disability pension he receives for injuries he received during combat in Vietnam Was 1966-1967-1968. I am walking away because I have know other choice the people have ignored my warning and my cry for help that the rent crisis was getting worse. The kind of help they cannot get from not one elected official, not the Governor neither the Mayor can give them.

A rent reduction for the people in the cities of Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan and Queens is easy to accomplish but NO one has asked me to help. The people are being totally brainwashed and lied too about Low in Come Housing by NYC Mayor who knew he could do anything to prevent the Homeless from escalating. Rent is too damn high is an international crisis.

There are many questions the people should ask themselves. I which them the best - I’m out.

Governor Andrew Cuomo—who, at the debate in 2010, agreed with McMillan that the rent is too damn high—not only has done little to ameliorate that situation but may very well have exacerbated it.

McMillan, a veteran of the Vietnam war who was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, was evicted from his apartment in the East Village in January. He filed a federal lawsuit alleging that his landlord, Lisco Holdings, had been trying to harass him out of his rent-stabilized apartment since at least 2009, locking him out of his apartment and refusing to accept his rent checks.

From his complaint:

“Undergoing treatment for (PTSD) I can’t remember much more than that other than I was offered me money numerous times and I wouldn’t take it,” McMillan writes. In an earlier suit, he claimed that Lisco had offered him $107,000 to leave the apartment.

What McMillan describes is not uncommon behavior for landlords in New York looking to renovate and increase prices in rent-regulated buildings in desirable neighborhoods like the East Village. Earlier this year, the mayor appointed a Tenant Harassment Prevention Task Force and signed legislation barring repeated buyout offers, for a duration of six months, if tenants refuse them.

McMillan’s suit, however, was dismissed, because federal courts do not have jurisdiction over eviction issues. He was paying less than $900 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village. In October, according to market analysis by MNS, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the East Village was $2,850 per month.

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.