No Labels to launch yearlong campaign with town hall in New Hampshire

No Labels, a group focused on promoting bipartisanship in Washington, is set to to launch a yearlong campaign to boost potential presidential candidates who vow to work across party lines.

The so-called unity campaign will kick off Monday night in Manchester, N.H., with a town hall event headlined by Panera Bread chairman Ron Shaich, No Labels founder and CEO Nancy Jacobson said in a phone interview.

She said she expects to draw a crowd of as many as 300 people, whom she described as “the real citizens of New Hampshire — people that we’ve worked with over the years that are believers” in No Labels’s mission, including local activists and volunteers.

“A lot of Democrats and some Republicans as well. A lot of independents,” Jacobson said of the event’s participants, acknowledging that “this one will probably be more Democrats.”

{mosads}Starting in January, No Labels is planning to dispatch supporters across New Hampshire — the first state to hold presidential primaries — to spread a “unity message” promoting bipartisan cooperation, Jacobson said.

The group is also planning to launch ads in the Granite State as part of the campaign.

Jacobson said the effort will culminate in November 2019 with a 2,000-person convention that will seek to bring together presidential candidates that align themselves with the group’s guidelines, such as vowing to assemble a bipartisan Cabinet if they win the White House.

In an interview on Monday, Shaich spoke of a “silent majority” of Americans who do not align with “extreme views” on either side of the political spectrum and said he wanted to listen to their concerns.

“We’re convening this to listen and we’re trying to listen to what people have to say about the ways in which the country is being governed — the ways in which polarization rules,” he said.

Shaich said President Trump’s brand of politics appeals to only a fraction of American voters. A similar extreme exists on the other side of the political spectrum, he said.

“[Trump] has never won a majority in this country, and I think that Donald Trump represents intense views of one part of the body politic, and there’s an equally strong extreme on the other side,” he said.

No Labels drew some criticism for a 1,500-person event in January 2016 when it lauded then-candidate Trump, among five other presidential hopefuls, for taking its “Problem Solvers Promise” — a pledge to work with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle on certain policy goals.

Jacobson compared the Monday town hall to a smaller event hosted by the group in October 2015.

Unlike the January 2016 event, which cost upward of $1 million, the town hall on Monday would be a small “coffee and donuts gathering” at a DoubleTree hotel in downtown Manchester, Jacobson said.

The Hill has previously partnered with No Labels on events.

Jacobson said that No Labels’s planned convention in November 2019 would likely carry a price tag similar to the $1 million-plus event in 2016.

“It’s going to be a huge undertaking,” she said.