No Labels drops bid for third-party US election ticket after spending millions

The centrist political group No Labels will not run a third-party campaign for the presidency in the 2024 election, after the group spent millions trying to recruit a candidate.

It emerged on Thursday afternoon that the group plans to announce it won’t field a so-called “unity ticket” that even if it was a long shot for the White House threatened to undermine Donald Trump or Joe Biden’s campaigns. The story was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and then reported by the Associated Press.

Democrats were particularly concerned that it would drain enough support from the president that he could lose his re-election bid, handing the White House back to former president Trump, who is signaling an even more extremist hard-right agenda if he wins a second term.

The conservative Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Nikki Haley, a candidate for the Republican nomination who lost out to Trump in the primaries, including losing her home state of South Carolina, where she had been a governor, were just two names floated for a No Labels ticket who reportedly turned the opportunity down.

No Labels was founded in 2009 by Nancy Jacobson, a prominent Washington political fundraiser.

More details soon …