The bipartisan political group No Labels has set mid-April as its drop-dead deadline to pull the trigger on a “Unity Ticket” in the 2024 presidential election.
Ryan Clancy, No Labels’ chief strategist, said that if the political climate stays the same over the coming months, the group expects to debut its Unity Ticket in mid-February, but the final decision could be pushed back a couple of months if necessary.
“This is only worth doing if the ticket has an outright path to victory and today if it is a Trump-Biden rematch, and the voters continue to feel like they do about Trump and Biden, which is not good, we see a real opening,” Mr. Clancy told reporters in a conference call Friday.
“But if the Republicans and Democrats, in the end, put up different candidates the public likes more, there might not be an opening in which case we won’t force it.”
The focus on No Labels intensified when Sen. Joe Manchin III announced Thursday that he was not running for reelection. Mr. Manchin, a West Virginia centrist Democrat who has been eyed for a unity ticket, has not ruled out a presidential bid and has spent years in Washington lamenting the lack of bipartisan work as one of the Senate’s last conservative Democrats.
As it stands, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump appear to be on a crash course for a rematch in 2024.
Mr. Trump’s rivals — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — are running out of time to slow his march to a GOP coronation.
The first official opportunity to tip up Mr. Trump comes in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses and then in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, which the secretary of state will announce the date of next week.
If they don’t punch a hole in Mr. Trump’s air of inevitability in those contests, the Republican nomination race could soon be over, and the prospect of a No Labels ticket could become a reality.
For now, the third-party group is working on ballot access. It has checked off 12 states, and plans to be on the ballot in all 50 states if they field a ticket.
Mr. Clancy said his group is taking input from members nationwide as part of its candidate search.
The prospect of a No Labels ticket is feeding into growing concerns among Democrats over Mr. Biden’s reelection prospects.
Recent polls have shown Mr. Biden has his work cut out for him in a hypothetical showdown with Mr. Trump.
At the same time, polls also show voters are not excited about a Biden-Trump rematch. Mr. Clancy said his group is convinced that close to 60% of voters would be open to another candidate.
Last week, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said the group is misleading the public.
“I hesitate to say ‘No Labels,’ because they do have labels,” the former House speaker said at an event organized by the Democratic-centrist group Third Way. “They’re called no taxes for the rich. No child tax credit for children. They’re called let’s undo the Affordable Care Act by getting Republicans in to change it.”
“When they jeopardize the reelection of Joe Biden as president of the United States, I can no longer remain silent on them,” Mrs. Pelosi said.
No Labels has also faced blowback from Democrats in Maine and Arizona.
“I think the reason we have seen more [pushback] from Democrats thus far is they are kind of united behind their nominee, at least for now, whereas Republicans are still arguing among themselves,” Mr. Clancy said. “Once they get aligned behind someone, we expect they will turn their attention to us.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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