The political organization No Labels is grappling with a dwindling number of potential candidates as it pushes for ballot access for a possible independent presidential bid this year.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) were rumored to be among the top potential candidates as the organization seeks to gain ballot access for a centrist ticket composed of one Republican and one Democrat in the 2024 election.
But with Hogan deciding to instead run for an open Senate seat in Maryland and Manchin ruling out a presidential bid in the past week, No Labels appears to have few obvious candidate choices left.
“They’re still in the stables, and [former President] Trump and [President] Biden are turning the third turn on the Kentucky Derby,” Democratic strategist Brian Doory said. “That’s a pretty big lead to make up.”
No Labels was originally formed more than a decade ago as a nonprofit organization intended to push for bipartisanship and help the two parties find common ground.
But the group began gathering signatures from voters to gain ballot access for a potential independent presidential bid as Trump and Biden seemed increasingly likely to become their respective parties’ nominees.
The organization’s leaders, including its CEO Nancy Jacobson and politicians like former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), have said the group would support a candidate if Trump and Biden are the nominees and certain “environmental conditions” are met.
They have been overseeing polling and research over the appetite for a possible independent bid and have argued that one could potentially be viable with polls showing an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want Trump or Biden to run in 2024.
No Labels has since been able to reserve a spot on the ballot in 16 states, and Hogan and Manchin stirred up chatter as two of the most prominent names with ties to the group. Hogan served as a national co-chair of No Labels before stepping down in December, while Manchin, who had already decided against seeking another term in the Senate, appeared at events with the group and declined to rule out a presidential run.
But both ultimately passed on a presidential bid, and none of the other remaining names whom pundits have floated as possibilities have received the same attention as those two.
Doory, the managing director at Firehouse Strategies, speculated that Hogan and Manchin both decided that the group wasn’t ready for a national campaign.
“No inside intel on that, but I get the sense that all of the people who have bowed out from it like Manchin, like Hogan, have realized that running for president and doing it in this No Labels fashion might sound well in theory, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s going to be about you,” he said.
An independent unity ticket would face the hurdle of getting on enough ballots so that the total electoral votes could at least surpass 270, the number needed to clinch the presidency. The filing deadlines vary by state and most are still a few months away, but such a campaign would still have its work cut out for it.
No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy told The Hill that the organization’s efforts to get on the ballot are on track and that it expects a unity ticket to make it in all 50 states. He noted that Ross Perot, who ran as an independent for president in 1992, only joined the campaign in February of that year and appeared on all 50 state ballots.
Clancy told CBS News that the group only expects to get on the ballot in 32 states, while the potential candidates would need to get on the ballot themselves in the remaining states. In the latter group of states, the signature requirements are easier to reach for a specific candidate than for a group like No Labels.
In the wake of Hogan and Manchin’s announcements, the organization has sought to emphasize it still has multiple strong options for candidates it would back. But it has also not been open about who, specifically, is being considered and how exactly a ticket would be chosen.
The group has said it would conduct its selection process with its members across the country at a virtual convention. Clancy told CBS it would decide in mid-March whether to proceed.
The national co-chairs told The Hill on Friday that the organization is speaking with “several exceptional leaders” about the ticket and will announce in the coming weeks if it will put forward candidates.
Clancy said the group will only support a unity ticket if it believes it can win the presidency.
He said the decisions from possible rumored choices like Hogan do not affect No Labels’s decision-making process and that they are speaking with leaders from across the political spectrum.
But members on both sides of the aisle said names don’t immediately jump out.
Lieberman said last month that Nikki Haley, the last remaining major GOP challenger to Trump, deserves “serious consideration,” but she has said she isn’t interested. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) did not rule out a run this month but said a path to win must be clear.
Kate deGruyter, the senior director of communications for the center-left group Third Way, which opposes No Labels’s efforts, said Hogan’s decision was a “vote of no confidence” in No Labels’s plan.
“The few people that are left for them to consider, a lot of them have major challenges if they were to go forward with this effort,” she said.
Other possible names, like former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who is running a primary challenge against Biden, have indicated they aren’t interested.
Republican strategist Barrett Marson said No Labels’s efforts, along with the third-party candidacies of Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., underscore how voters aren’t satisfied with Trump and Biden — though he argued that none of them can win.
Marson said the fact that the group has ballot access in Arizona, a key swing state, could tip the election and act as a spoiler.
“If No Labels ends up actually fielding a respectable bipartisan ticket, disaffected Republicans and right-leaning moderates who really don’t want to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, that 5 or 10 percent, in Arizona that’s certainly enough to turn an election between one candidate or the other,” he said.
Polling in past presidential election years has shown voters expressing interest in other candidates than those from the two main parties, but their percentages are usually in the single digits by Election Day. Perot at one time polled ahead of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992, but he ultimately received about 19 percent of the vote, the most successful third-party effort in the modern era.
Democratic strategist Mike Mikus noted that Manchin said he was not going to run for president if he did not think he could win, and he argued two of the biggest potential names deciding against running makes the group more irrelevant to 2024.
“Just from an electoral standpoint, it’s going to be very difficult for them to find anybody who has credibility as a candidate,” he said.
Public polling has not included any of the potential No Labels-backed candidates since none have been put forward yet. But polls including Trump and Biden with third-party candidates like Kennedy, West and Jill Stein have shown them well behind the two main candidates.
Mikus said the past two presidential races have been narrowly decided in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, so a third-party effort may only need to get 2 percent or 3 percent to tilt an election.
“They cannot field a candidate who can win in November, so the only thing they’ll be doing is playing the spoiler,” he said.