No Labels announced on Thursday that it is abandoning efforts to recruit a candidate to pursue a third-party run in the 2024 presidential election. The ‘centrist’ political group had been rumored to have tried recruiting several potential candidates to run on its ballot line, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD), and former Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH).
“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,” the group’s CEO, Nancy Jacobson, said in a statement. She added: “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The group launched its effort to field a competitive third-party presidential candidate in 2022, raising a multi-million dollar campaign war chest in the subsequent years. In November 2023, No Labels’s chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, predicted: “Based on the conditions as they are, we expect to be putting up a ticket early next year.” As late as January of this year, the group claimed they were considering 13 candidates to put forward on a third-party unity ticket.
Early in the 2024 presidential election cycle, No Labels surprised the campaign world by gaining ballot access in over a dozen states, demonstrating that they had built an organized effort. Throughout its candidate search, the group maintained its intention to recruit a candidate who could contend with Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump.
Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the founding chairman of No Labels, passed away on March 27, 2024.