A Mysterious Third Party Enters the Presidential Race

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

No Labels, which pitches itself as a centrist movement to appeal to disaffected voters, has secured a considerable amount of funding and is working behind the scenes to get on Presidential ballots across the country. The group has yet to announce a candidate, but “most likely we’ll have both a Republican and Democrat on the ticket,” Pat McCrory, the former governor of North Carolina and one of the leaders of No Labels, tells David Remnick. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are reportedly under consideration, but McCrory will not name names, nor offer any specifics on the group’s platform, including regarding critical issues such as abortion and gun rights. That opacity is by design, Sue Halpern, who has covered the group, says. “The one reason why I think they haven’t put forward a candidate is once they do that, then they are required to do all the things that political parties do,” she says. “At the moment, they’re operating like a PAC, essentially. They don’t have to say who their donors are.” Third-party campaigns have had significant consequences in American elections, and, with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden historically unpopular, a third-party candidate could peel a decisive number of moderate voters away from the Democratic Party. Plus, three New Yorker critics—Doreen St. Félix, Alexandra Schwartz, and Inkoo Kang—discuss why so many scripted and reality shows use psychotherapy as a central plotline.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:12.2	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:15.9	Last week on the program, I talked with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was best known as a proponent of anti-vaccine
0:23.2	conspiracy theories before he launched a presidential campaign. But he is not the only wildcard to
0:29.5	emerge in the 2024 presidential race so far. No labels is a would-be political party that you may not have heard of yet.
0:38.9	They haven't announced who their candidate is,
0:41.3	but they've secured a considerable amount of funding,
0:44.7	and they're working behind the scenes to get on the ballot across the country.
0:48.6	No Labels is pitched as a centrist movement to appeal to disaffected voters
0:53.2	in both major parties.
0:56.4	Now, the history of third-party candidates from Martin Van Buren to Teddy Roosevelt,
1:00.8	Horace Greeley, to Ross Perot is an interesting one, but no one running from that position
1:06.3	is ever won. And yet third parties can have real consequences. There are many to this day who believe that
1:13.3	Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election in 2000, or that Ross Perot spoiled things for George H.W. Bush
1:20.6	in 1992, and that led to the Clinton presidency. At this early point, Joe Biden and Donald Trump seem the likely nominees for
1:30.1	their parties, yet polls tell us that they are profoundly unpopular with voters. So who knows? A third
1:37.6	party could have an outsized impact. One of the leaders of no labels is Pat McCrory, the former governor of North Carolina.
1:46.0	I spoke to him recently to try to understand what role this new party, if that's what it is, intends to play in our political future.
1:55.0	No Labels is not planning to stick around as a third permanent political party, nor after we select candidates,
2:04.5	we are not going to run the campaign. That will be up to the candidates. Which leads me to ask,
2:09.6	who is no labels? They're a group, I mean, they're volunteers with a very small staff. I'm a volunteer,
2:16.6	by the way. I accept no pay. It's a grassroots
	...

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