Ex-congressmen warn No Labels presidential effort could boost Trump in swing states like Wisconsin

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of former congressmen is warning against a 2024 third-party presidential bid from the centrist organization No Labels, cautioning that such an effort could cost Democrats the election in key swing states like Wisconsin and hand the White House to former President Donald Trump.

Running what No Labels has described as a moderate alternative to Trump and President Joe Biden, the former congressmen argued, would only siphon votes from Biden in a doomed third-party push.

“If these were normal times we would have no trouble with third parties,” Richard Gephardt, a former Democratic majority leader who formed a PAC this year to counter third-party efforts that could help Trump, told reporters Wednesday.

“But these are not normal times,” he added, citing Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “We cannot allow the individual who really instigated that possible overthrow to get back in the White House.”

Former Wisconsin Reps. Reid Ribble, a Republican from Green Bay, and Ron Kind, a La Crosse Democrat, joined Gephardt Wednesday in opposing a potential No Labels candidate. Both men, who were members of the No Labels-founded bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, contended the 2024 election was not the right time for a third-party candidate.

“I see too great of a risk,” said Ribble, who is a vocal anti-Trump Republican. “Under no circumstances can we have Donald Trump back in the White House.”

No Labels was created in 2010 with the goal of promoting centrism and bipartisanship. But the group recently shifted its scope to running what it calls a “unity ticket,” which it argues could break the political cycle “dominated by angry and extremist voices driven by ideology and identity politics.”

The group has yet to recruit a candidate, but several moderates, like West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who recently announced he would not seek re-election in the Senate, have been floated as potential options.

It reportedly plans to hold its nominating convention in Dallas in April and has so far qualified for the ballot in 12 states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Missouri.

In a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, No Labels Chief Strategist Ryan Clancy cited 2020 exit polling and an October Harvard CAPS-Harris poll as he argued a majority of voters want an alternative to Biden and Trump, the presumptive 2024 party nominees.

"No Labels has said unequivocally from the very beginning we will only offer our ballot line to a ticket if American voters clearly want it and if it has a chance to win," Clancy said. He added that the group is "still working through our process" to determine how it would structure its ticket and said No Labels has not yet decided who could be on it.

Political organizations can start circulating petitions for ballot access in Wisconsin on Jan. 1, 2024, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The deadline to file is April 1.

Clancy said No Labels "has a strategy to obtain ballot access in Wisconsin and will begin the process early next year."

Polling commissioned in June by Gephardt and his PAC, Citizens to Save Our Republic, showed Biden beating Trump 52-48 in a two-way race nationwide. But when a moderate, third-party candidate is put in the race, Trump takes a 40-39 lead, according to the polling.

That swing is more pronounced in Wisconsin. The polling suggests Biden would beat Trump 53-47 in a two-way race in Wisconsin but would lose 37-40 with the moderate third-party candidate factored in. (The polling from June did not take into account other candidates, like now-Independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

Much of the Democratic unease stems from the idea that Trump has a high floor and a low ceiling of support in a general election, meaning the former president has a strong base of supporters unlikely to be swayed by a third-party candidate. While Biden's support might be broader, those supporters might not be as loyal.

A Marquette University Law Poll released last week showed Biden beating Trump 50% to 48% among registered voters in Wisconsin. The poll suggested both men have vulnerabilities: 55% of voters said the phrase "too old to be president" describes Biden very well, and 35% of polled voters said the phrase "has behaved corruptly" describes Trump very well.

The exact impact of a third–party candidate in Wisconsin, where statewide elections are often decided by less than a percentage point, however, is difficult to predict.

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin to Trump by six-tenths of a point, or about 23,000 votes, left-wing Green Party candidate Jill Stein got 31,072 votes. Labeling Stein a spoiler, however, would presume Stein’s voters would have turned out to vote had she not been on the ballot — and vote for Clinton as well.

The former lawmakers on Wednesday noted No Labels has said it would end its third-party bid if polling shows its candidate would swing the election for either Trump or Biden. They pointed out that the group has yet to address recent polling and lamented that the group’s donors are largely kept secret.

“Unless they’re just trying to make a point or be a spoiler, I’m not quite sure what they’re trying to accomplish here,” Kind, the La Crosse Democrat who retired from Congress last year, told the Journal Sentinel.

“I’m having a hard time seeing what they’re really trying to pull off here,” he said. “They can’t believe that there’s any chance for a third party to actually win the presidency.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ex-congressmen warn against No Labels 3rd-party presidential effort