No Labels, seeking to be a 2024 presidential player, disputes claims that its candidate would help Trump

No Labels, a little-known national political group that has been pushing a centrist approach to politics for more than a decade, is angling to place a presidential candidate on the general election ballot next year in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

But first, the group has to deal with two concerns that were made clear when it hosted one of its monthly virtual town hall meetings last week.

People in the crowd of 112 participants who support No Labels’ effort to place a presidential candidate on the 2024 ballot thought the organization needs more publicity.

And just as many people who are curious about the effort are said they are terrified it will inadvertently help former President Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden next year.

Ryan Clancy, chief strategist for No Labels, wryly responded to the concern about publicity with what turned out to be a nod to the second concern about Trump, noting that No Labels would be the topic of a Washington Post article the following day.

“Be on the lookout for that,” Clancy told the group while promising that No Labels “will be spending a lot on a major ad campaign.”

The Washington Post’s headline the next day: “Democrats meet with anti-Trump conservatives to fight No Labels 2024 bid.”

That article laid out a meeting in early June of about 40 establishment Democrats and Republicans who fear No Labels will boost Trump’s chances of a second term.

In a time of hyper-partisanship, when far-right conservatives and far-left progressives draw the most attention while casting anyone not in line with their politics as corrupt or treasonous, the vast center middle of the political spectrum is also drawing plenty of interest.

The Forward Party, which also hopes to plant its flag in that center, announced in Harrisburg on Wednesday that two state senators, Democrats Anthony Hardy Williams of Philadelphia and Lisa Boscola of Bethlehem, will “affiliate” with the centrist group.

Williams, who has drawn fire from progressives for pushing for school vouchers and more education choices, said he also holds positions on such issues as abortion that conservatives oppose.

“I just try to be consistent,” Williams said. “People try to put a label around me. I don’t think it works. My record is driven by issues, not an ideology.”

While No Labels organizes to be a party with a presidential candidate on the ballot nationwide, the Forward Party is taking a slower and more deliberate approach by appealing to Republicans and Democrats to join forces while remaining in their original political parties.

Craig Snyder, a Republican political consultant working with the Forward Party in Pennsylvania, said in an interview with The Inquirer that the party will not have a candidate for president next year. He also worries that No Labels could help Trump.

“I think if they go forward with a presidential ticket, it has the great likelihood of helping Donald Trump win the election, assuming he is the Republican nominee,” Snyder said. “I think any reasonable analysis of where their votes will come from helps Trump over Biden.”

Democrats and progressives fear that a candidate No Labels pitches as “centrist” would be much closer to Biden on the political spectrum than Republicans like Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who have shifted steadily to the right as they campaign for president. So a No Labels candidate seems more likely to draw votes from Biden than a Republican nominee.

No Labels, founded in 2010, helped launch the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the U.S House.

The nonprofit group does not disclose its donors, though the New Republican in April reported that it received more than $130,000 from 2019 to 2021 from Harlan Crow, a conservative mega-donor now best known for lavishing conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with extravagant vacations.

Clancy, during last week’s town hall meeting, said No Labels has budgeted “about $70 million” on the 2024 effort and “we’re about two-thirds of the way there” in raising that.

Clancy, in an interview with The Inquirer, applauded the Forward Party’s bottom-up ballot approach while defending his organization’s top-down focus on the presidential race.

The message driving No Labels is that a Biden-Trump rematch is the “sequel nobody wants.” Clancy points to polling from April that showed voters wanted new choices for president.

“Why is it when every single poll says two thirds of people don’t want what our major parties are selling, the response from our political system is: ‘You just have to take it,’” Clancy said. “Why is that an acceptable outcome?”

No Labels offers a pair of caveats about the 2024 presidential race.

First, No Labels says it has no intention in playing the role of “spoiler” and will nominate a ticket only if polling shows a viable path to victory over both the Democratic and Republican nominees.

And second, No Labels would yank its candidates off the ballot if their campaigns effectively tilted the race to a competitor, especially Trump.

And while there has been media speculation about who No Labels might nominate, Clancy said the organization has not spoken to any potential candidates for the ticket, calling it “too early” in the process.

“A lot of times, I think, politicians are out there too long,” he said. “They overstay their welcome.”

Still, polls collected by the website Real Clear Politics show Biden and Trump are the overwhelming favorites to win their party nominations.

Third-party candidates for president can start circulating nomination petitions early next March to get on the November 2024 ballot in Pennsylvania. Those petitions are due in August 2024.

Clancy said the No Labels plan in Pennsylvania is to list “placeholder” candidates at the top of those petitions and then replace them with the party’s real candidates for president and vice president if they are nominated during a convention in April in Dallas.

The Green Party made a similar move to place candidates for president and vice president on the Pennsylvania ballot in 2020. Democrats exploited missteps in that process by the Green Party in a successful legal challenge to have those candidates removed from the ballot.

The Democratic motivation was clear: Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, received 49,941 votes in Pennsylvania while the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, lost the state to Trump that year by 44,292, a margin of just 0.7%.

Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by 80,555 votes, a margin of just 1.17%, while a Libertarian candidate for president won 79,380 votes in the state.

Larry Otter, the Green Party’s lawyer in the 2020 Pennsylvania legal case, said in the days after that election that the state might have been forced into an automatic recount of ballots if the Green Party candidates had remained on the ballot.

The Democratic Party, which did not want a repeat of 2016 in 2020, will likely will contest a No Label ballot in Pennsylvania in 2024.

Spokespeople for the state’s Democratic Party and Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment about No Labels.

Clancy insists Stein, whom he called “a left-wing protest candidate,” is the wrong comparison to No Labels.

He said Democrats should be more concerned about Cornell West, an academic and activist who announced this month that he is running for president to the left of Biden.

“Every vote for him is one that would probably go to Biden,” Clancy said of West.

Clancy compares the No Labels effort to Ross Perot’s 1992 third-party bid for president in an election in which the Democratic nominee, Bill Clinton, defeated the Republican incumbent, George H.W. Bush.

Exit polling in that race showed Perot, who won no Electoral College votes, drew equally from Clinton and Bush voters and would not have affected the outcome.

No Labels will try to break through in Pennsylvania after a 2022 election with unprecedented cooperation between Democrats supporting Josh Shapiro for governor and Republicans who opposed their party’s far-right, Trump-backed nominee, State Sen. Doug Mastriano.

Clancy, who was aware of that bipartisan cooperation last year, does not think it poses a threat to No Labels in 2024.

Snyder, who was active in the anti-Mastriano movement last year, scoffs at No Labels comparing their effort to Perot in 1992.

“They’re saying the point is to offer Americans a real choice, and they’ll only do it if they see a path to victory,” Snyder said. “Ross Perot didn’t win a single electoral vote.”