Former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt argued that a third-party candidacy backed by the centrist political group No Labels “would probably elect” former President Trump back into the White House.
Gephardt said in an interview with PBS NewsHour on Monday that the effort from No Labels to run a bipartisan ticket of one Democrat and one Republican in the 2024 presidential election would not be an issue in “normal times,” as third parties have consistently run throughout U.S. history.
But he said the country avoided the 2020 election being “broken” by a “whisker” because then-Vice President Mike Pence and GOP officials in a few key states did not give in to pressure from Trump to overturn the election. He said Trump can never be near the presidency again after he tried to “overthrow our government and overthrow our electoral process.”
“The No Labels effort, we believe, if you look at all the polling data, all the data you can look at, would probably elect Donald Trump, if the two candidates are Trump and [President] Biden,” Gephardt said.
Gephardt served as House majority leader and minority leader during the 1990s into the early 2000s, representing a congressional district in Missouri. He launched his own presidential bid ahead of the 2004 election, but dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses.
No Labels has drawn mounting ire from Democrats over the potential for it to act as a spoiler to Biden’s reelection chances and put Trump back in the White House if he wins the Republican nomination.
The group said last month that it would end its third-party efforts if polls next spring show Biden “way” ahead of Trump heading into the general election. It has said on its website that it has not committed to putting forward a presidential candidate but is only preparing for the possibility of doing so.
No Labels CEO Nancy Jacobson told NBC News in an interview that the organization would stop its efforts if it would help Trump be reelected but did not offer a metric for that determination.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has flirted with a third-party run and stoked speculation this week by joining a No Labels even in New Hampshire on Monday.
Gephardt said an organization he leads to push back against No Labels’ effort, Citizens to Save Our Republic, has commissioned national and swing state surveys that “conclusively” show that No Labels would act as a spoiler.
He said Biden would defeat Trump in the national race by 4 points, but a third-party bipartisan candidate would cause Biden to lose by 5 or 6 points.
“If you look at 2020, it was independent moderate voters in six swing states that stayed enough with Biden for him to win the race over Donald Trump. We cannot have Donald Trump back in the White House. He engineered a overthrow of the electoral process. He would do it again. We cannot allow that to happen,” Gephardt said.