A third-party candidate for president could be in the running by the spring of next year, according to a political veteran looking for a viable ticket to challenge the dominant Republican-Democrat binary.
No Labels founding chairman Joe Lieberman, a former U.S. senator who jumped from being a Democrat to an independent and ran an unsuccessful bid for the vice presidency in 2000, announced on Sunday that his group has decided on a month and location to hold its nominating convention for 2024 — but only if the conditions are right.
“We already have scheduled a bipartisan convention. Think about it: We haven’t seen that ever in recent history. A bipartisan nominating convention for Dallas, Texas in April of next year,” Lieberman said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”
No Labels is seeking to create an “insurance plan” that would allow a “Unity ticket” to run if the two major parties fail to pick candidates that a vast majority of Americans want to vote for in 2024, according the group’s website.
That may very well end up being the case as FiveThirtyEight polling trackers show more than half of Americans disapprove of President Joe Biden as he seeks a second term and former President Donald Trump, who leads the GOP field, faces an “unfavorable” level above 50%.
There has been some speculation that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and former Republican Utah Governor John Huntsman could team up after they appeared together for a No Labels town hall in July.
Although Manchin appears open to the idea of a third-party campaign for the White House, he has yet to declare his plans for 2024 — when he is also up for re-election if he chooses to campaign for another term in the Senate. Huntsman ran for the presidency as a Republican in 2012 before dropping out and endorsing Mitt Romney.
No Labels announced this month that it had secured ballot access in 10 states, a number Lieberman said his group aims to bump up to all 50 states. By the fall, Lieberman added, the group will bring together a process to consider names for a ticket if the “standards” expected by No Labels are met.
Lieberman said No Labels only intends to run a ticket “if we think it has a realistic chance to win.” Lieberman also said his group does not intend on running a “spoiler ticket,” which he noted is generally defined as one that “has no chance to win and would take votes disproportionately from one of the major party candidates.”