Sherrod Brown surprises Democrats by announcing he will not run for president

Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the Democratic party’s progressive stalwarts, has announced he will not run for president in 2020.

Related: Sherrod Brown: Democratic senator from Ohio rules out 2020 run – live

Brown, a three-term senator from the swing state of Ohio, said he would continue the fight to make his “dignity of work” platform a centerpiece of the Democratic agenda, but that his party would be best served by him remaining in the US Senate.

“I will keep calling out Donald Trump and his phony populism. I will keep fighting for all workers across the country,” Brown said in a statement on Thursday. “And I will do everything I can to elect a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate in 2020.”

Brown’s decision followed months of speculation over his plans – bolstered by a listening tour launched in January that saw him criss-cross early primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

But while Brown, 66, has long been a leader of the Democratic party’s populist movement, he would have entered the race without the national name recognition of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, or the established legacy of former vice-president Joe Biden.

Brown’s appeal among working-class voters will nonetheless position him to play an influential role in the general election, especially as Democrats vie to take back Ohio after the battleground swung in Trump’s favor in 2016. Brown was comfortably re-elected in the November midterm elections, earning nearly 10 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton did two years prior.

Brown was considered a top contender to be Clinton’s running mate in 2016, but was widely perceived to have lost out because John Kasich, then the governor of Ohio, would have replaced him with a Republican in the Senate.

Elected to the Senate in 2006, Brown has spent much of his career in Washington focused on workers’ rights and labor issues. Despite his decision not to run, Brown is expected to push for policies that include expanding overtime pay, universal childcare and raising the minimum wage.

“We’ve seen candidates begin taking up the dignity of work fight, and we have seen voters across the country demanding it – because dignity of work is a value that unites all of us,” Brown said on Thursday.

“It is how we beat Trump, and it is how we should govern.”