WASHINGTON — No Labels, the centrist political group that sought to shake up the 2024 presidential campaign with a third-party candidate to rival Joe Biden and Donald Trump, said Thursday it will not field a candidate after all.
“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential campaign and more hungry than ever for unifying national leadership,” No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson said in a statement. “But No Labels has always said that we will only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we can identify candidates with a credible path to victory in the White House. No such candidate has been put forward, so the responsible course of action is for us to withdraw.”
The decision not to run a presidential ticket is a boon for Democrats who have complained that a centrist candidate would spoil Biden’s chances of winning.
The abandonment of the presidential bid comes after weeks of speculation about who would make the list, including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan , who resigned from the No Labels board of directors and has since launched a bid for the U.S. Senate.
It also follows the death of the organization’s co-founder, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, last week.
No Labels has seriously considered a handful of candidates in recent weeks, including billionaire Bill Haslam, a former Tennessee governor, and Geoff Duncan, a former Georgia lieutenant governor, a person familiar with the conversations said.
The group, which has largely focused on promoting bipartisan politics in Congress during its 14-year history, had spent months laying the groundwork for a third-party presidential bid. No Labels called its plan an “insurance policy” in the event of a rematch between Biden and Trump that pits two historically unpopular candidates against each other.
Voters could still have other third-party alternatives to choose from, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Jill Stein and Cornel West. But a No Labels-backed candidate would have inherited benefits that most of those efforts lack — including ballot access in 19 states.
A political action committee called New Leaders ’24 was launched hoping to raise $300 million to support a No Labels-backed candidate, while another super PAC allied with the group, No Labels 2024, was raising money. funds to finance a possible nomination agreement. Federal Election Commission filings show No Labels 2024 had $1.9 million in cash at the end of 2023.
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released late last year found that appeal for an independent candidate in seven swing states was strongest among key Democratic constituencies such as young people and urban residents, data demographics essential to Biden’s reconstitution of his electoral coalition.
According to the poll, 16% of Biden voters in 2020 say they are attracted to third-party alternatives, compared to 11% of Trump supporters.
©2024 Bloomberg LP Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
California Daily Newspapers
