No Labels, the centrist nonprofit advocacy group that had spent months teasing a potential third-party “unity ticket” in 2024, will not move forward with its effort, the group announced Thursday afternoon.
“Today, No Labels is ending our effort to put forth a Unity ticket in the 2024 presidential election,” a No Labels spokesperson said in a statement to National Review. “Americans remain more open to an independent presidential run and hungrier for unifying national leadership than ever before. 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 after the 501(c)(4) organization had vetted more than two dozen potential candidates, many of whom have announced publicly in recent weeks that after careful consideration, they had decided against joining the ticket. That list includes former New Jersey governor and two-time GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie, retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and former GOP governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, who is now running for Senate this cycle.
Just last week, the group was shocked by the sudden death of its 82-year-old founding chair, the late Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
The group’s leaders said recently that they had secured ballot access in 19 states, thanks in part to the $8.9 million that No Labels spent in 2022 on “citizens engagement, digital and grassroots building and ballot access,” according to tax forms first reported by National Review last year. Those tax forms also show that the group raked in $21 million last year, up from $11 million the year before. Because the organization is a nonprofit advocacy group, it is not legally required to disclose its donors.
No Labels’ months-long recruitment of prospective candidates had the Biden coalition on edge in recent months, as the incumbent’s poll numbers remain underwater and the group began securing ballot access in swing states that are necessary to a winning coalition.
In a sign of how seriously Democrats are taking spoiler candidates this cycle, the Democratic National Committee announced last month that for the first time, the national party will hire operatives who will focus squarely on combating third-party and independent presidential candidates like No Labels and Democrat-turned-Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Other Biden-aligned groups like American Bridge and Third Way had also spent months going on offense against the group with opposition research and aggressive media campaigns.