Yang confirms ‘conversations’ with No Labels

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang confirmed that he has had “conversations” with individuals tied to the political organization No Labels. 

Yang, an entrepreneur who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, told Politico in an interview Monday that he and the group have “a lot of friends and people in common” but avoided directly saying if No Labels approached him about running for president again under their banner. 

“I’ve had conversations with various folks who are associated with No Labels,” Yang said. 

Yang has stirred some questions about his future plans with the creation of his Forward Party, which he has described as a centrist alternative to the two main parties he argues are too extreme. He left the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2021 and launched the Forward Party soon after. 

No Labels has meanwhile been trying to gain steam to get its presidential ticket potentially composed of one Democrat and one Republican on the 2024 ballot in states across the country. The organization has called for national unity behind what would be a bipartisan ticket. 

But it has also sparked fears among some Democrats that it could act as a spoiler for President Biden’s reelection chances and lead to the election going to former President Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination. 

Yang slammed the idea of Trump and Biden being the two main nominees, calling it “terribly unrepresentative and borderline ridiculous” and mentioning their ages. Biden is currently 80, while Trump is 77. 

“In a country of 330 million people, you would choose these two gentlemen at this stage? I mean, it makes zero sense,” he said. 

Yang described a situation in which third-party candidates could hurt Biden in a potential rematch against Trump next year. He said he expects Green Party candidate Cornel West to win 2 percent to 3 percent of the vote and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running in the Democratic primary, to run as a Libertarian for not getting a “fair shake” in his challenge against Biden. 

He also noted that recent presidential elections have been decided by a few hundred thousand votes in a few key swing states. 

No Labels has said it would end its third-party efforts if polls showed Biden “way” ahead of Trump by next spring. 

Yang added that a third-party run may not be designed to win the election in response to question about if one has a “realistic shot.” 

“The question presumes that the goal of any third party is to win a presidential election,” he said, calling it likely one of the “mistakes” and “problems of the past.”