The director of bipartisan political organization No Labels has revealed his vote in November’s presidential election after the group abandoned an effort to run a third-party candidate.
Joe Cunningham, a former Democratic congressman in South Carolina, said during an interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Thursday that he would vote for President Joe Biden in his expected rematch with former President Donald Trump after being asked for his choice “as a person.”
“Me as a person? I would vote for Biden over Trump,” Cunningham said, while ignoring Cavuto’s suggestion of independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a viable third option.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Biden, Trump and Kennedy campaigns via email on Thursday night.
Spencer Platt
Earlier in the day, No Labels released a statement explaining that it had decided to “stand down” on its 2024 plans after concluding that it was unable to “identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House.”
Cunningham, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat in South Carolina’s 2022 gubernatorial election before joining No Labels, said that the group had come up empty on its quest to find a bipartisan “hero” during his Fox News interview.
“No Labels was looking for a hero and a hero never emerged,” said Cunningham. “At the end of the day, we weren’t able to find candidates that we felt had a straightforward path of victory in this.”
No Labels has promised to “remain engaged” throughout the 2024 election season, with the group saying that it is “concerned that the division and strife gripping the country will reach a critical point after this election, regardless of who wins.”
The decision to abandon plans to run a candidate came one week after No Labels’ founding chairman, former U.S. senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, died at the age of 82.
During a Bloomberg Television appearance on March 21, only six days before his death, Lieberman indicated that a No Labels presidential ticket would be announced “in the next couple of weeks.”
Lieberman, who became an independent in 2006, also said that he would prefer Biden over Trump during an interview with The Atlantic last year, insisting that “the last thing” he would want to make happen “is bringing Donald Trump back to the Oval Office.”
“When I look at the data next year, I’m going to be very cautious about interpreting it,” Lieberman told the magazine. “If it appears that, notwithstanding our goals, we may create a real risk of inadvertently helping to reelect Donald Trump, I will be strongly opposed to running a third-party ticket.”
“And I think I’m reflecting a majority of people in No Labels, including the leadership,” he added.
The third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader has been cited by many as a key factor in Lieberman and former Vice President Al Gore losing the 2000 presidential election, when a razor-thin win in Florida confirmed by a controversial Supreme Court decision handed victory to former President George W. Bush.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.