The NPR Politics Podcast - Who Funds 'No Labels' Push For More 2024 Choices? They Won't Say.

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Roughly half the country believes that neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump should seek the presidency in 2024 — though both men are. A group called No Labels is laying the groundwork for a potential third party candidate, but they won't say where they're getting their money.This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, KJZZ reporter Ben Giles, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Paranjo Dungana here in Washington, D.C., in front of the Reflection Pool in the Capitol, where I'm here for my first time seeing it in person. This podcast was recorded at 1.13 p.m. Eastern on Monday, May 1st, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be exploring the city. OK, enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we have Ben Giles of member station KJZZ in Arizona. Hey again, Ben. Hello. So about 47% of the country wants neither President Biden nor former President Trump to seek the presidency again. That's according to polling from The Wall Street Journal. And that being said, both men are now officially running.

Ben, you've been reporting on a new group that is getting involved in the presidential election, but they're not part of either major political party. Can you tell me about them? No Labels is this Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has looked at polling like the one you mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, has conducted its own polling, and found that there are enough dissatisfied Republicans, Democrats, and independents out there to at least explore the idea of teeing up a third party candidate to run for president in 2024. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to do that, but they at least have started to lay the groundwork. And by that, I mean, gather signatures in states across the country to qualify for the 2024 ballot as a new political party.

As in Arizona, for example, the No Labels Party, they've gained ballot access. Now, that means they could run any race up and down the ticket, but they're focused exclusively on the presidential race. So, Ben, I mean, are they a political party? That really depends on who you ask. If you talk to No Labels, they are pretty forceful in pushing back on the idea that they're a political party. They maintain that they're a nonprofit corporation, maybe just trying to help another candidate, another political party vehicle get on the ballot. But then you look at a place like Arizona, where the secretary of state's office here in official letterhead is now addressing No Labels as the No Labels party. But at the same time,

No Labels hasn't registered as a political party in the state of Arizona, nor at the federal level. And a lot of that has to do with campaign finance rules and regulations. As long as they are a nonprofit, they don't have requirements to disclose the donors who are funding their operation or to disclose the expenses that they're making in states like Arizona. They're definitely in this weird space when it comes to, are they a political party?

Are they not a political party? And what does that mean for what the American public and the American voter gets to know about their finances? So Domenico, let's get some context here. How hard is it to run as a candidate outside of the two-party system here in the United States? It's really hard. That's because this country's presidential election is decentralized. In other words, every single state, all 50 states have their own way, their own method of running their elections. And that means you need to have people on your team who know how to get you on the ballot in each of those 50 states with their varying rules, signatures, money, and all of that

is very, very expensive. And not many people on their own or with a backing of a group have that much money to be able to go and do that. Do we have like a good picture, and this is to you, Ben, on who is funding this operation? No, we really don't. And that's because they are, in the words of one legal expert, I spoke to the epitome, he said, of a dark money group. They are raising money to influence the outcome of an election at this point, and they are spending money to influence the outcome of an election by potentially teeing up a third party candidate. Do they have a sense of what that third party or unity candidate would even look like? You know, from what they told me, it seems like they're very early in the process of, you know, vetting candidates to potentially use this platform that they're having set up. But they kept referring back to, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast,

the polling. Ryan Clancy is a lead strategist for No Labels. He told me how this would be successful. So the only way this works is if, in the view of the public, the major party nominees are unappealing enough and a potential unity ticket is appealing enough that there seems like a viable path to electoral college victory. So at this point, it seems like they're more worried about how the public views President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump than they are about a potential candidate that could challenge both of those two men for office. I think they think that that gives them an opening. But, you know, I had to kind of hold back LOLing a little bit at listening to that because

it's always pie in the sky. If you look, for example, at the Pew typology that's done every few years, the Pew Research Center looks at people's ideologies, asks questions to figure out how we kind of break down. And they found that we really are segregated by about nine different ideologies that are pretty whole. And what they found was with independents, the people who are self-declared independents, they agree on very, very little. They're apathetic toward politics is about the only thing they agree on. They don't love the parties, but when it comes to policy, they do not agree.

And I mean, I will say like pie in the sky is like the kind read on this. But like if you were to take a cynical view of this whole effort, this could look like a really like sidelong attempt to run a spoiler campaign. And even if that's not the intention, Domenico, do you think it could turn out that way? politically partisan country right now where almost anybody could get, I've said this before, 45 to 47 percent of the vote. I mean, you could just as long as it has an R or D on it, that's what's going to happen. And when you look at where No Labels is targeting, a lot of the states that they're targeting are places that Joe Biden won by very, very slender margins. And that could really tip the balance, even if it's just a couple points one way or the other. I mean, think about Arizona, Georgia. Those are places where Biden won by only thousands of votes. Yeah. All right. Let's take this group could potentially affect the upcoming election. But Ben, I want to talk more about the case Snow Labels is making here.

Can you tell me more about what their vision is or what they're hoping to sort of accomplish? Well, I know we talked earlier about some of the swing states that they might register for the ballot in and how that could really impact very, very close presidential margins of victory, particularly for President Biden's reelection chances. But when I spoke to Ryan Clancy, the lead strategist with No Labels, he made it clear that they were going for as many states as possible. They have already registered in places like Alaska. A lot of the states that they've registered in so far, it doesn't have to do so much with those states being a political target as much as it does have to do with the deadlines

for when third parties, new political parties, can qualify for the ballot. So they say be on the lookout for the rest of the year. They told the Guardian newspaper that they're trying to register in 22 more states by the end of 2023. I think they'll keep working in 2024 to really, again, tee up at least the possibility of providing a platform for a third party candidate. And they really want to encourage bipartisanship. I mean, that's why this group in 2017 helped create the Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress.

And they sort of want to elevate that and their brand nationally as they see this hyper partisanship taking hold in the country. Yeah. And I mean, well, time is of the essence, especially in elections. And I wonder, what is the timeline, Ben, for them to decide whether or not they'll put forward a candidate? You know, I don't really have a good idea of that just yet. I think at this point they are focused on broadening their reach, trying to get in, as they mentioned, as many states as possible. And then just continue to follow the polling, external polls like those in the Wall Street Journal, and then their own internal polling, just to see how dissatisfied Republicans and Democrats and independents are. You know, Ryan Clancy told me that maybe one of

the presidential candidates, be it Biden or Trump, changes their tune a little bit and starts to resonate more with the general American public. At that point, they say they would back off and they would not offer balancing this line, they will probably nominate somebody if they decide to go there. There's been some talk of them potentially doing that in April of next year, some months before the primaries are over for the Democrats and Republicans. I would also say that I think they believe that their role really is just as a facilitator, that they are going to be looking for a candidate, not just whom they can endorse, but who they believe really does have a shot and then could use the platform they've built up. Here's Ryan Clancy talking about it sort of in space travel terms. Yeah, if you want to use like a NASA analogy, we're building the launching pad for potential unity ticket run. If a ticket were to actually run,

they would have to build the rocket ship to get to the White House. Now, I think a lot of that harkens back to the conversation we had earlier about, are they a political party? Are they not? They're really trying to keep their distance from that label. But I think it does also show they believe there needs to be not just the right environment where there's enough dissatisfied Republicans and Democrats or voters dissatisfied with the major ticket options, there also needs to be a compelling third-party case. Yeah, and the case for that and what a lot of people will look at in polling and it pops

certainly is that some 49% this year now have said that they consider themselves independents in Gallup's tracking of this. And that's the highest we've ever seen, right? The problem there is when you scratch below the surface, most of those people lean one way or the other toward mostly voting for Democrats or mostly voting for Republicans. And, you know, on the one hand, you can say it's because they have little choice because they only have one or the other. On the other hand, they also don't agree, like we mentioned earlier, on a whole lot when it comes to policy and have to kind of fall to one side or the other.

Very, very interesting. All right. That's it for now. Ben Giles of KJZZ in Arizona, thanks for joining us today. Thank you. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.