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 wouldn’t field a candidate after all.
“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before,” No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson said in a statement. “But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The decision not to field a presidential ticket is a boon for Democrats who had complained that a centrist candidate would play spoiler to Biden’s chances of winning.
The abandoned presidential bid comes after weeks of speculation over who would be on the ticket, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who stepped down from the No Labels board and has since launched a U.S. Senate candidacy.
It also follows the death of the organization’s co-founder, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, last week.
No Labels had seriously considered a handful of candidates in recent weeks, including billionaire Bill Haslam, the former Tennessee governor, and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, said one person familiar with the conversations.
The group, which was largely focused on fostering bipartisan policy 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 case of a Biden-Trump rematch that would pit 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 advantages that most such efforts lack — including access to the ballot in 19 states.
A political action committee called New Leaders ’24 launched in the hopes of raising $300 million to support a candidate backed by No Labels, while another super PAC allied with the group, No Labels 2024, was raising money to fund a potential nominating convention. Federal Election Commission filings show No Labels 2024 had $1.9 million cash on hand 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, demographics that are critical to Biden reassembling his electoral coalition.
Sixteen percent of Biden’s 2020 voters say they are drawn to third-party alternatives, compared to 11% of Trump’s supporters, according to the poll.
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