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“I think it is really important to have that option. Because we have never been at the point we are today in America,” Hogan added. “The vast majority of people in America are not happy with the direction of the country and they don’t want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president.”
The group has already gained ballot access in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon, with signature-gathering efforts underway in many other states. Jacobson, a former Democratic fundraiser, said the organization has until March 2024 to decide whether to field a presidential ticket. It would pick one Republican and one Democrat as presidential and vice-presidential nominees, she said, with an announcement of their identities coming no later than April 15 of that year, when a No Labels convention is planned in Dallas.
Jacobson has not revealed the identities of the donors funding the effort, saying she is shielding them from public attacks, and would not discuss possible names of potential candidates. The group, which helped start the House Problem Solvers Caucus, was founded in 2010 as a policy antidote to rising polarization. It later established political fundraising efforts to support candidates that backed its agenda.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, distanced himself from No Labels 2024 planning. “This is not an effort I’m personally involved with or supportive of,” he said in a statement.
The group also cites clear majorities of voters who say they do not want either Biden or Trump to be the respective nominees. The group’s polling concludes that about 6 in 10 voters are open to considering an unnamed “moderate, independent” candidate if Trump and Biden run.
Dritan Nesho, the chief executive of HarrisX, said national modeling of those voters reveals that a No Labels ticket would need to win 61 percent of the 6 in 10 voters open to considering a moderate alternative to win the electoral college — or about 37 percent of the popular vote. The group has produced a hypothetical electoral college map that shows the states No Labels would win under that scenario, including Republican states such as Texas, Nebraska and Florida, Democratic states such as Virginia, Illinois and Washington, and swing states such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The group’s polling from December 2022, which was shared Sunday with The Washington Post, found that the unnamed “moderate independent” candidate was supported by 20 percent of registered voters, compared with 28 percent for Biden and 33 for Trump. In a two-way contest between Trump and Biden tested in the same poll, Biden was supported by 42 percent and Trump by 43 percent of registered voters.
Nesho acknowledged that the polling might change once No Labels announces the people who will be running on the ticket. The group’s leadership said they would test the named candidates in polling before launching a bid.
“We don’t know the name that is going to be on this ticket if there is going to be a ticket,” Nesho said. “But what we do know is that there’s such dissatisfaction in the electorate that there’s a clear opening.”
Third-party bids for president are common in U.S. politics, with little track record of success. In the 2020 election, Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz explored an independent bid based on similar research, noting in a “60 Minutes” segment that 40 percent of Americans identify as independents. A poll in early 2019 by CNN found that two-thirds of voters said they were unlikely to support him, facing greater resistance than potential Democratic contenders such as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) or former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.). He ultimately decided against running, in part for health reasons.
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has previously worked with No Labels, said the reason has to do with how independents behave at the ballot box. A 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that although 38 percent of the electorate identified as independent, only 7 percent identified as independent without leaning toward one of the two major political parties.
“What we know is that people who say they are independent but lean to the Democrats or Republicans behave just like Democrats or Republicans,” Ornstein said. “There is a zero, or near zero, chance that an independent candidate is going to win enough support to win the presidency.”
It is more likely that a robust third-party campaign could win some share of the electorate, as the Green Party did in 2000 and 2016, or a minority of the electoral votes, as Alabama Gov. George Wallace did in 1968. If no candidate won a majority of the electoral votes in 2024, because of a three-way result, the U.S. House in 2025 would be tasked with voting for a new president, with each state delegation in the new Congress casting a single ballot. Currently, 26 states have a majority of Republicans in their delegation.
Clancy said the group had begun to prepare for such an outcome, in part by exploring state laws around the unbinding of electors, which would allow parties to broker for a majority of electoral votes before a vote in the House. He said No Labels believes that a generic No Labels ticket, without named candidates, would pull evenly from Trump and Biden.
Cross tabs of a June 2022 HarrisX poll show Democrats, liberals and urban voters to be more open to a moderate independent candidate than Republicans, conservatives or rural voters. Nesho said that in a larger poll after the midterm elections, the spreads narrowed.
A No Labels ticket would only run to win, Clancy added, unlike the protest campaign of Nader in 2000, which had a goal of earning a single-digit percentage of votes to qualify for matching funds.
“We have very tight guardrails around this effort,” he said.
In the meantime, the group continues to be critical of Biden and Trump. A memo prepared by No Labels argues that Biden, who has said he intends to run for reelection, is a weakened candidate, despite the nearly unified support of his party.
“Behind closed doors and the safety of anonymous quotes, most of Washington knows 2024 is a disaster waiting to happen,” it reads. “Democratic leaders are privately wringing their hands about Biden and a few Republican leaders still hope to stop Trump.”
McCrory, who describes himself as a “strong Republican,” declined to answer a question about whether he was concerned that the No Labels effort could help elect Trump to a second term.
“I want to let the process work and see what the American people have to say, because I think there’s a voice that’s not being heard among the American people,” he said.
Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist for Bush and McCain who now hosts “The Circus” on Showtime, was also part of the early group that helped found No Labels. He said he trusts the group’s current leadership.
“I believe them at their word when they say it is a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ strategy,” McKinnon said. “I have faith in the end that they will do the right thing.”
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