Charlie Gasparino, financial news reporter at Fox Business and heavily tied into Wall Street, from his twitter on May 3rd:
In a followup response to a comment this was a surprising leak to a conservative outlet as Gasparino works for Fox:
As I follow third parties more than 99% of Americans, I've known about them for awhile. No Labels has kept on the down-low but they are very well-funded and have a group of "leftish Republicans/rightish Democrats" that were elected politicians inside it. Larry Hogan is part of the national leadership of the group. Joe Lieberman is in it. They have ballot access so far in 4 states, including Arizona where Democrats are suing to get them off the ballot. While if they have buckets of money, they'll be able to like Ross Perot get onto all the ballots, there's a few states where ballot access is just awful designed by the Republicans and Democrats to minimize the threat of this kind of thing ever occurring. I think they'll need a candidate to get those.
The organization says they are not a political party (which means they're not technically required to disclose their donors) but are a group providing the ballot access for a white knight incase we have a Biden-Trump election redux. They say they are not planning to back a candidate for any political office except President.
I think such a candidate in today's environment would drop one of the two main parties down to 3rd in a lot of states, although obviously it depends on who is running. (Perot took 2nd in Utah ahead of Clinton in 1992 and 2nd in Maine ahead of Bush, which he almost won). What Perot did in 1992 has become more and more impressive to me in hindsight that when we still had institutionally strong political parties and machines, he got 1 out of 5 Americans to vote for him. The "strong political parties" are dead, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in 2016 demonstrated that. So we'll be 32 years on from Perot, more Americans say they're independent than ever, there's an acknowledgement by most people that both parties have just ran to their extremes, this could realistically work. If you had a strong candidate running here (admittedly a giant asterisk), I could see:
Northeast/Pacific Coast/Hawaii - Trump would drop to 3rd place everywhere except for probably New Hampshire, I'd give this candidate a strong chance to win Maine which it and Alaska are the most independent-friendly states in the country
Midwest/Plains/Rocky Mountain states - outside of the major cities, Democrat vote share would collapse even further, maybe even to single digits in a lot of counties. I've done deep dives into Indiana election results because it's where I live and I'm in politics a small amount, and the Democrats at least in this state, they've completely fallen apart post-Trump. This state voted for Obama in 2008. Even the good things they can point to there's a counterpoint. They're for example gaining the historically very rich Indianapolis suburb and establishment Republican Hamilton County (Carmel) but they're also losing Chicago outer suburb Lake County (Gary) which has voted heavy Democrat for a century as labor and Democrats continue their slow divorce, so in the end as far as net vote gain it's a wash. There's 92 counties in the state and more than 90% of them are diehard Republican already.
South - this candidate would perform weakest here just as Perot did, where the two party system would stay intact due to Southern cultural reasons (note: lived in North Carolina until I was 30)
BREAKING: Big NY donors are balking at giving money to both @realDonaldTrump and @JoeBiden. sources tell @FoxBusiness. Concerns that both - for different reasons - aren't fit for the job. Increasingly the NYC Wall Street donor class is being courted by @NoLabelsOrg.
“SCOOP: People inside @NoLabelsOrg tell me the organization will attempt to run a 3rd party candidate ONLY IF @JoeBiden and @realDonaldTrump are the respective nominees of the Dem and GOP. Its polling shows that’s the likely outcome. Outreach to donors shows an appetite by big Dem and Republican donors for an independent if it’s a Biden-Trump race. Names being thrown around are @GovLarryHogan, @Sen_JoeManchin.
“SCOOP: People inside @NoLabelsOrg tell me the organization will attempt to run a 3rd party candidate ONLY IF @JoeBiden and @realDonaldTrump are the respective nominees of the Dem and GOP. Its polling shows that’s the likely outcome. Outreach to donors shows an appetite by big Dem and Republican donors for an independent if it’s a Biden-Trump race. Names being thrown around are @GovLarryHogan, @Sen_JoeManchin.
“Sorry not a leak; my source is a possible NoLabels delegate who works on Wall Street and is politically unaligned.”
The organization says they are not a political party (which means they're not technically required to disclose their donors) but are a group providing the ballot access for a white knight incase we have a Biden-Trump election redux. They say they are not planning to back a candidate for any political office except President.
I think such a candidate in today's environment would drop one of the two main parties down to 3rd in a lot of states, although obviously it depends on who is running. (Perot took 2nd in Utah ahead of Clinton in 1992 and 2nd in Maine ahead of Bush, which he almost won). What Perot did in 1992 has become more and more impressive to me in hindsight that when we still had institutionally strong political parties and machines, he got 1 out of 5 Americans to vote for him. The "strong political parties" are dead, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in 2016 demonstrated that. So we'll be 32 years on from Perot, more Americans say they're independent than ever, there's an acknowledgement by most people that both parties have just ran to their extremes, this could realistically work. If you had a strong candidate running here (admittedly a giant asterisk), I could see:
Northeast/Pacific Coast/Hawaii - Trump would drop to 3rd place everywhere except for probably New Hampshire, I'd give this candidate a strong chance to win Maine which it and Alaska are the most independent-friendly states in the country
Midwest/Plains/Rocky Mountain states - outside of the major cities, Democrat vote share would collapse even further, maybe even to single digits in a lot of counties. I've done deep dives into Indiana election results because it's where I live and I'm in politics a small amount, and the Democrats at least in this state, they've completely fallen apart post-Trump. This state voted for Obama in 2008. Even the good things they can point to there's a counterpoint. They're for example gaining the historically very rich Indianapolis suburb and establishment Republican Hamilton County (Carmel) but they're also losing Chicago outer suburb Lake County (Gary) which has voted heavy Democrat for a century as labor and Democrats continue their slow divorce, so in the end as far as net vote gain it's a wash. There's 92 counties in the state and more than 90% of them are diehard Republican already.
South - this candidate would perform weakest here just as Perot did, where the two party system would stay intact due to Southern cultural reasons (note: lived in North Carolina until I was 30)
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