Ahhhh now it makes sense….
No Labels Has 13 Presidential Candidates, 14 State Ballots, and 7 Weeks To Decide Whether To Run
The centrist group says it will decide on challenging Biden and/or Trump after Super Tuesday.
MATT WELCH | 1.18.2024 11:55 AM
https://reason.com/2024/01/18/no-labels-has-13-presidential-candidates-14-state-ballots-and-7-weeks-to-decide-whether-to-run/
No Labels, the 501(c)(4) "commonsense majority" political nonprofit established in 2010 to promote civility, bipartisanship, and moderation, has been marking the arrival of presidential primary season by trying doggedly to remind people that it still exists.
Last Thursday, just after news broke of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropping out of the Republican race, the centrist group let journalists know that the pugnacious pol might make a fine No Labels nominee (Christie's disdain for the project notwithstanding). As if to broaden the third-party lane for former blue-state Republican governors, Maryland's Larry Hogan then let slip that he had recently resigned from No Labels' board ("in a possible sign of a 2024 bid," noted the Associated Press headline); though on CNN Sunday Hogan played down his personal ambitions and endorsed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for the GOP nomination.
On Friday, the Washington Examiner reported that the putative political party had assembled a list of 13 possible candidates (assumed to be mostly Republican, with a Democratic veep; all as yet unnamed), to be whittled down between now and sometime in March, if and when it looks like former President Donald Trump has sewn up the GOP nomination. "They believe they have a path to victory with the right unity ticket of a Democrat and Republican," a source told the Examiner after attending a No Labels strategy session last week in Florida, where a new associated super PAC was announced.
Fox News further reported on Monday that the leading figure among those presumed 13 candidates, Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.), recently told a private gathering in Connecticut that he would be meeting with President Joe Biden in a matter of days to try to "move him to the center" on issues like spending and regulation and personnel. "Manchin strongly suggested that [the meeting] will set the stage for a decision on his own 2024 presidential run," Fox reported, with D-Day coming as soon as Super Tuesday on March 5.
If inserted into the race, the new presidential kid on the block would have ballot access in at least 14 states, worth 123 electoral college votes: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, and Utah. Signature gatherers have another 14 states in their sights between now and November, though the major parties are throwing up their usual obstacles.
The 2024 environment thus far has looked unusually promising for third parties and independents. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., since dropping out of the Democratic primary (in which he was polling higher than any incumbent-challenger since Pat Buchanan in 1992), has consistently drawn around 15 percent support in a three-way matchup between Biden and Trump, both of whom have been at around 37–38 percent. RFK Jr. is the only major figure in the presidential race with net favorable ratings, per a Gallup poll released last week. (Kennedy is only now starting to obtain ballot access, beginning in Utah.)
For the entirety of the campaign, a solid majority of Americans have been dissatisfied with the Trump-Biden choice, which is basically No Labels' current theory of the case. Both Biden (at 38 percent) and Trump (41 percent) are underwater with independents, the swing voters in most 21st century presidential elections. A Gallup synthesis of its 2023 polls released last Friday showed that 43 percent of Americans last year politically self-identified as independents, tying the all-time record of 2014.
And we are no longer just talking about Republican-leaning or Democrat-leaning independents, blocs whose voting habits have been relatively predictable over time. The number of measurably independent independents has grown by 46 percent nationwide since October 2008, from 24.5 million to 35.3 million, nearly edging out the total of registered Republicans (35.7 million, as of October 2023, compared to 45.9 million Democrats). In 2004, among the 30+ states that track partisan registration, Democrats and Republicans combined for a 75 percent market share; now that's down to 68 percent. (Registered Libertarians, meanwhile, have tripled since 2008, up to 742,000.)