The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has “had conversations” with No Labels, a group considering launching a third-party candidate in the 2024 election.
“I’ve had conversations with various folks who are associated with No Labels,” Yang told Politico.
Asked “repeatedly” if the group had asked him to be its candidate in an election shaping up to be a repeat of Joe Biden v Donald Trump in 2020, Yang “side-stepped a direct response”, Politico said.
“We have a lot of friends and people in common,” Yang said, while wearing a lapel pin promoting his own third-party effort, Forward, Politico noted.
Citing polling which shows scant public appetite for a rematch between Biden, 80, and Trump, 77, as well as widespread concern about the two men’s ages, No Labels has trumpeted its fundraising for a possible third-party presidential tilt. Reporting, including by Mother Jones, has shown contributions from both sides of the political aisle.
Names linked to a No Labels candidacy have included Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, and Larry Hogan, a former Republican governor of Maryland. Neither has counted out the possibility.
No Labels has attracted widespread opprobrium from anti-Trump campaigners, who fear a third-party candidate could peel off Biden voters and hand Trump a White House return even as he faces 91 criminal charges – 17 concerning election subversion and 40 over retention of classified information – and assorted civil suits.
On Tuesday, Reed Galen, a former Republican operative now part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said: “If you didn’t think No Labels was dangerous and unserious before, check out them talking to Andrew Yang, an unserious person who would love to be considered dangerous.”
Having made his fortune in tech-angled investing, Yang showed well in the 2020 Democratic primary before fading. In 2021, he ran for New York mayor.
He told Politico he was an “anyone-but-Trump guy” and said: “I would not run for president if I thought that my running would be counterproductive, or if it would increase the chances of someone like Donald Trump becoming president again.”
But he also said a Biden v Trump rematch would be “terribly unrepresentative and borderline ridiculous”, adding: “I mean, you’re talking about two guys whose combined age is [nearly] 160. In a country of 330 million people, you would choose these two gentlemen at this stage? I mean, it makes zero sense.”
Third-party candidates have affected presidential elections. In 2000, the Green candidate, Ralph Nader, was widely seen to have peeled votes from the Democrat, Al Gore, in an election decided by fewer than 600 votes in Florida, in favour of the Republican George W Bush.
In 2016, another Green, Jill Stein, and the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, were seen to have undermined the Democrat, Hillary Clinton, in a tight election won by Trump.
Yang told Politico he thought the 2024 Green candidate, the academic Cornel West, would get more votes than Stein. He also predicted that Robert F Kennedy, the conspiracy theorist challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination, would be the Libertarian candidate.
Asked who he would vote for, he said: “The field’s still coming together.” He also said he would appear with Marianne Williamson, a self-help author also running for the Democratic nomination.
No Labels did not comment.
Yang is promoting a novel, The Last Election, co-written with Stephen Marche. In publicity material, the book is described as “a gripping, intricately plotted political thriller set on the campaign trail of the USA’s next and – because of crucial flaws in the electoral system – its last election”.
