VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The federal Liberal leadership race has one less contender. Alex Burton, a Crown prosecutor who lives in Vancouver, won’t be going for the Grits’ top job.

While he says he didn’t have any trouble raising $75,000 for the Liberal’s entry fee, he did have concerns paying it back before the race in April.

“I can raise the money to get into the race. But I’m not sure, having traveled across the country, that there is an appetite for the campaign that I was running financially, to make sure that I can pay back my donors,” he says.

Burton went 12,000 kilometres across Canada over a six week period to gain support.

“I made the commitment that I would run my campaign in the same way that I would run the country. I’m not going to spend money that I don’t have. The challenge is that it would have to be paid back through donations. And it was difficult for me to ask my supporters to continue to fund the campaign if I wasn’t confident we could pay that back before April.”

Many people considered Burton to be a long shot.

He won’t say who he’s going to back in the highly contested race, which includes Justin Trudeau, and Vancouver MP Joyce Murray.

But he does have a plan for the future.

“It is my intention to run, to become an MP in the election in 2015,” he adds.