The presidential movement No Labels has made it official: it will field a presidential candidate in 2024. The group claims it wants to launch a so-called "unity ticket" and will announce its candidate selection process – but not its candidate – today (Thursday). However, strategists with the group have said if they see a path to victory they will go with a bipartisan ticket – a presidential nominee from one party and a vice-presidential nominee from the other.
Supporters of Joe Biden worry No Labels will pull votes away from the president in battleground states. But Phillip Jauregui, senior counsel and director of the Center for Judicial Renewal at AFA Action, disagrees with that assessment.
"Typically, you think of Biden as being a more traditional Democrat nominee [and] President Trump being more of a nontraditional Republican nominee," the attorney tells AFN. "So, the basic rule there would be that if you're losing independent third-party voters, that most of those would come from Trump rather than Biden."
And Jauregui points out another third-party movement called Third Way – which self-describes as a champion of "modern center-left ideas" – wants to find a candidate to siphon votes from Trump.
"Third Way is saying that No Labels would pull votes away from Joe Biden. Well, what does that tell you about Third Way? That would seem to mean that they favor Biden, but I thought they were a third-party group," he states. "So, this is really interesting – and I don't know exactly how it's going to play out."
But according to Jauregui, third-party "disrupters" have worked in the past. "Ross Perot, for example, back in the 90s," he explains. "If Perot had not been in that race, it's probably doubtful that Bill Clinton would have won the presidency. This is an old tactic."
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley – who dropped out of the running for the GOP nomination last week – has turned down the idea of running under the No Labels banner. As AP has reported, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan had weighed running for president under the banner, but has since decided to seek the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from his state. Retiring West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has said he will not run for president.
Editor's Note: AFA Action is an affiliate of the American Family Association, the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
