No Labels is dispensing with its effort to put together a viable ticket to challenge the dominant Republican-Democrat binary in the 2024 presidential election, the group confirmed on Thursday.
Sources told The Wall Street Journal that the group’s founder and CEO, Nancy Jacobson, informed allies that a formal announcement was forthcoming after the group reached out to 30 candidates during the unfruitful search.
The group released a statement affirming the decision shortly after the news broke.
“Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run, and hungrier for unifying national leadership, than ever before,” the group said. “But No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House. No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The move comes a little more than a week after Joseph Lieberman, a former U.S. senator and vice presidential candidate who served as founding chairman of No Labels, died at the age of 82.
Last year, The New York Times reported that No Labels had raised as much as $70 million that the group said was needed to help it get on the ballot in states across the country.
No Labels said it had been working to devise a “Unity ticket” while citing polls showing dissatisfaction among voters over the prospect of a 2020 rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
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The group declared on its website that it would make a determination on whether to proceed with the ticket “shortly after” March 15, but had not done so until more than two weeks later.
A number of people were floated as potential matches for No Labels, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who announced in February that he would not campaign for the White House after considering his prospects.
Joe Cunningham, the national director of No Labels and a former Democratic congressman from South Carolina, entertained the idea of Nikki Haley joining the group’s ticket before she ended her bid for the GOP nomination.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), a longshot candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination who ended his campaign in March, also expressed openness to joining the No Labels ticket — as Haley’s running mate.
Other names that had been bandied about included Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, and Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, who dropped out of the GOP primary contest in January.
There was also former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who is now running for the Senate.
No Labels said on Thursday it would “remain engaged over the next year during what is likely to be the most divisive presidential election of our lives.”
The group added, “We will promote dialogue around major policy challenges and call out both sides when they speak and act in bad faith.”
At this juncture, Biden and Trump have virtually locked up the nominations of their respective parties. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running as an independent and working to get on the ballot in all 50 states.