‘No Labels’ eye a third-party run in 2024. Democrats are alarmed
The bipartisan political group No Labels is conducting a well-funded bid to secure a “unity ticket” for the 2024 presidential race, sparking stiff opposition from even some of its closest allies who fear returning the White House to Donald J Trump.
Topping the list of potential candidates is Senator Joe Manchin III, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia who has given his party a headache and could bleed President Biden’s support in areas critical to his re-election.
The centrist group’s leadership was in New York this week to raise some of the money — about $70 million — it says it will help with nationwide efforts to access ballots.
“The decision to nominate a ticket” will be made shortly after next year’s primary on what’s known as Super Tuesday, March 5, said Nancy Jacobson, the co-founder and leader of No Labels. A national convention is scheduled for April 14-15 in Dallas where a Democrat-Republican ticket would be drawn up to face the two major party nominees. (Mr. Biden faces two long-running challengers, and Mr. Trump is the Republican frontrunner.)
Other potential No Labels candidates being proposed include Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Independent, and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, who has said he would not run for the GOP nomination and the national co chairman of the group. But Mr Manchin has received most of the attention recently after speaking to donors on a conference call last month.
“We don’t intend to choose fate now,” former Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican and longtime associate of the group, warned in an interview Wednesday as he prepared to meet with donors and leaders in New York. “Our focus is on the mood.”
The campaign has already swept ballot boxes in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado and Oregon and is now targeting Florida, Nevada and North Carolina. Ms. Jacobson called the project “an insurance policy in case both major parties put forward presidential candidates that the vast majority of Americans do not support.”
“We are well aware that any independent ticket is on a steep climb and if our rigorously collected data and polls suggest that an independent unity ticket cannot win, we will not nominate a ticket,” she said.
Caveats aside, the effort is causing major tensions with the group’s ideological allies, congressional partners and Democratic Party officials doing everything they can to stop it. Third-party candidates won enough votes to arguably cost the Democrats the 2000 (Al Gore) and 2016 (Hillary Clinton) election. Republicans say the same thing about Ross Perot’s role in blocking George HW Bush’s re-election in 1992.
“If No Labels leads a Joe Manchin against Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think it will be a historic disaster,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat and strong supporter of the organization to date. “And I speak for just about every moderate Democrat and frankly most of my moderate Republican friends.”
People close to Mr. Manchin have their doubts whether he would participate in a No Labels ticket. He must decide in January whether to run for re-election in his Republican state. But he does see an opportunity to return to the Senate.
Popular Democrat turned Republican governor of the state, Jim Justice, is running for the Republican nomination to challenge Mr. Manchin, but so is West Virginia’s most Trump-affiliated House member, Alex Mooney, who has the backing of the entrenched Club for Growth political action committee.
If Mr. Mooney mr. Justice can knock out, or seriously harm him by bringing up the governor’s centrist record and his days as a Democrat, Mr. Manchin a path to re-election and no real prospect of running for president on the No Labels ticket.
But he’s keeping his options open, at least since he’s raising money under the auspices of No Labels.
“Let’s try to get people back together for the sake of the country, not just for the sake of the party,” Manchin told the group’s backers on a recent conference call leaked to the news site. Pick this month.
Opponents are mobilizing to stop No Labels. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, sent a cancellation letter this month to the group’s director of ballot access, accusing the organization of misrepresenting its intentions while pushing for signatures to get on the state’s presidential ballot.
The Arizona Democratic Party sued this spring to take No Labels off the state ballot and accuse it of “following a shady strategy to gain access to the ballot — when in reality they are not a political party.”
One of the founders of No Labels, William Galston, a former policy aide to President Bill Clinton, publicly resigned from his own organization because of the pressure. In an interview, he pointed to polls in which he said voters who dislike both Mr. Trump and President Biden — “double haters” — overwhelmingly say they would ultimately vote for Mr. Biden. With an alternative, that may not be the case.
And Democratic members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a centrist coalition affiliated with No Labels that actually does No Labels’ legislative work, openly rebel.
“I can think of nothing worse than a new Trump presidency and no better way to help him than running a third-party candidate,” said Illinois Democrat Representative Brad Schneider.
No Labels has long had its detractors, variously accused of ineffectiveness, championing Republicans, and existing primarily to raise large sums of money from wealthy corporate donors, many of whom give primarily to Republicans.
But the grumbling criticism then took on a more urgent tone Puck posted a partial transcript of a leaked conference call that No Labels held with its financiers. To that, Ryan Clancy, the group’s chief strategist, said that ballot organizers were at “600,000 signatures and counting” and close to slots on the ballots in “about 20 states,” with their eyes on all 50.
Mr Manchin joined the call in closing: “The hope is to keep the land we have, and you can’t do that by pushing both sides to the extreme,” he said.
Mr. Manchin’s political appeal outside of West Virginia is questionable. The loudest discontent among Democrats with Mr. Biden comes from young voters, many of whom are animated by the issue of climate change, and they are not aligned with the coal-state Democrat in that regard.
Mr. Manchin is not a climate denier in the traditional sense. He has repeatedly referred to the “climate crisis” caused by human activities.
But Mr. Manchin, whose state produces some of the highest levels of coal and natural gas nationally and who has made millions from his family’s coal business, has long fought against policies that would penalize companies for not accelerating the transition to clean energy and Mr. Manchin has accused Biden of promoting a “radical climate agenda.”
But Democrats are concerned. Pittsburgh’s southwestern suburbs border West Virginia, and it wouldn’t take many Democrats to run to Mr. Manchin to hand over Pennsylvania to Mr. Trump, they warn.
Ms Jacobson said on the leaked conference call that No Labels had been “Pearl Harbored” by a March memo from the Democratic centrist group Third way. The memo was bluntly titled, “A Plan That Will Re-Elect Trump.”
“It wasn’t exactly a sneak attack,” Matt Bennett, longtime leader of Third Way, replied in an interview. “We are very shocked.”
Lisa Friedman contributed reporting from Washington.