A longshot Democratic challenger of President Joe Biden said Sunday that he would be open to a third-party run with No Labels to defeat former president Donald Trump.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) told voters in New Hampshire that he planned to take his presidential bid "all the way to the convention," Politico reported. He added, though, that he was open to running with No Labels, which has sought to field a bipartisan presidential ticket, "as long as the data supports it, to defeat the most dangerous man in the world."
"I’m not going to turn my eye blindly," Phillips said, "like all of my colleagues are doing, to other ways that we might still defeat Donald Trump. Whether it is any third-party entity, if they have data that shows that by putting up a certain candidate, who could actually take votes away from Donald Trump, if it is a Trump-Biden match-up, why would we not all consider that?"
Several moderate politicians have seen their names pop up in speculation that they'd run on the group's ticket, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R.), and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R.).
While No Labels's leadership has been clear that it does not want to field a spoiler candidate who would help Trump, some have argued that the group would do just that. Asked about the possibility of a No Labels run when he launched his campaign, Christie called a third-party effort to take votes away from Trump a "fool's errand" because "you never quite know who you’re going to hurt in that process."
Some recent polling bears out that hypothesis. A Michigan poll from earlier this month saw Trump blow out Biden in a head-to-head race in the Wolverine State, a gap that widened when researchers added third-party candidates—including No Labels runs with Manchin and Liz Cheney—to the mix. Another poll from December that showed Trump leading Biden in seven swing states saw Biden perform better in most of the states when there were no third-party candidates on the ballot.
The same day that Phillips made his comments, the Biden campaign dismissed the idea that third-party candidates could hurt his reelection chances. Principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told ABC News's Martha Raddatz that voters who "have the most at stake" understand that "there's only going to be two parties that have an ability to get to 270 electoral votes," adding that they are "not going to be fooled by anything else."
At the same time, it is uncertain whether No Labels has the resources to mount a run with Phillips or another candidate. In June, there was little evidence that the group had the funds or the strategy to undertake the $70 million effort it had promised, as the Washington Free Beacon reported. It had $20 million on hand at the start of last year, a shortfall of $50 million, according to its 2022 tax documents released in November 2023.