In 2024, billionaires and corporate executives are preparing to go from using shadowy front groups that influence politics and policy to fielding handpicked candidates on their very own ballot line, which is being secretly purchased outside disclosure rules that have long governed election campaigns.
That may sound like a conspiracy theory, but it is happening right now out in the open. Donors and political operatives at the corporate front group No Labels are actively exploiting a campaign finance loophole to buy themselves direct access to ballots nationwide, in an effort that Democrats warn could swing the upcoming presidential election.
The scheme \u2014 which is based on a campaign finance law carve-out for groups seeking to draft candidates \u2014 could create an entirely new path to elect candidates even more beholden to billionaires and corporate interests than major party politicians. And here\u2019s the kicker: The public might never be able to know who is paying to make it happen.
Right now, all the public knows is that No Labels is leading a $70 million campaign to lay the groundwork for a potential 2024 \u201cunity\u201d ticket \u2014 which would feature one Democrat and one Republican. Democrats and media outlets have been raising alarms that the move could undermine President Joe Biden and help elect a Republican.
Compared to moneyed groups\u2019 previous failed efforts to field alternate candidates, the No Labels initiative is more ambitious, secretive, and corrupt: Under the guise of bipartisan consensus, the corporate influence machine is buying its own national ballot line, funded by ultra-wealthy, anonymous donors.
Thanks to a 2010 court ruling, No Labels doesn\u2019t have to disclose anything about who\u2019s funding its campaign. It\u2019s also planning to employ a top-down candidate selection process: No Labels has indicated that candidates would be chosen by a group of people handpicked by the organization, which has close ties to corporate lawmakers like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ind.-Ariz.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Now, as No Labels pursues its own nationwide ballot line, experts say the group will likely never have to reveal to the public who\u2019s financing the effort \u2014 not even if the organization does decide to field a presidential ticket.
Of course, the Democratic and Republican political parties have both become increasingly reliant on dark pools of outside cash to help elect their politicians. But the official party committees must still regularly file public reports detailing their donors and expenditures.
No Labels, by contrast, is a tax-exempt nonprofit and is not required to publicly disclose its donors \u2014 even as it\u2019s reportedly spending tens of millions getting ready to run candidates on the \u201cNo Labels Party\u201d line around the country.
A spokesperson for No Labels did not respond to a request for comment.
Low Risk Of Corruption
Long funded by billionaire investors and corporate executives, No Labels has up until now made its name forging alliances with key lawmakers in Washington \u2014 cheering on those politicians and helping raise money for their campaigns as they\u2019ve pushed policymaking in the Biden era to the right \u2014 to the benefit of their corporate donors.
Now, as it gets involved in the 2024 election contest, No Labels\u2019 strategy can be traced back to a 2010 court ruling and a subsequent 2014 Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision that concluded nonprofits seeking to draft federal candidates are not considered political committees until they officially nominate a candidate.
What that means, in practice, is that dark money groups do not have to disclose their donors or expenses as they work to procure ballot access around the country and consider potential candidates.
The stage was set for this development in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential campaign, when a group called Unity08 pushed a plan to obtain ballot access and field a unity ticket \u2014 and raise unlimited contributions to fund the effort.
With Law and Order actor Sam Waterston as its spokesman, the group said it planned to host a political convention on its website to nominate presidential candidates \u2014 with the idea being that Americans in the \u201cfed-up middle\u201d would rush to support politicians who were less ideological than those in the two major parties.
When the FEC said that Unity08 needed to register as a political committee and comply with contribution limits, Unity08 sued the agency. The group ended up abandoning its ballot access program, blaming the FEC for hamstringing its efforts, and continued its fight in the courts.
In 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Unity08, citing a prior 1981 decision involving a union that funded several \u201cdraft groups\u201d encouraging Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to run for president.
The 2010 ruling found that organizations that seek to obtain ballot access and draft undetermined candidates do not have to register as political committees and comply with FEC regulations until they select a candidate for federal office.
The judges argued that such a scenario would not pose much risk of corruption.
\u201cOf course under Unity08\u2019s plans, potential donors can anticipate that in due course nominees will emerge and be able to benefit from the ballot access that Unity08 will have by then secured,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThe nominees might feel grateful or even beholden toward donors who effectively conferred such ballot access.\u201d
However, the judges downplayed concerns that this would allow for \u201cquid pro quo\u201d corruption, reasoning that \u201cUnity08\u2019s proposed method of generating nominees was such that neither donors nor candidates would know at the time of the donations which candidate would ultimately benefit from the group\u2019s convention.\u201d
A few years later, the FEC blessed a similar plan from Americans Elect \u2014 another centrist group proposing a bipartisan unity ticket selected via an online convention. While Unity08 was a 527 political group that disclosed its donors, Americans Elect was a dark money nonprofit, like No Labels is today.
FEC commissioners unanimously voted in 2014 to \u201cfind no reason to believe that Americans Elect, a nonprofit organization, was required to register with the commission as a political committee.\u201d
Americans Elect reportedly raised $35 million as part of its 2012 unity ticket plan, but shut down after announcing that no candidate had reached the national support threshold needed to participate in its online convention. (Former Republican Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer came closest with 5,979 votes, but that was still 4,000 short of the minimum.)
Although New York Times columnist Tom Friedman reported that Americans Elect was \u201cfinanced with some serious hedge-fund money,\u201d tax records show the group only raised $8 million from 2010-12. The effort was primarily funded with $23 million in defaulted loans from its chairman, the late billionaire venture capitalist Peter Ackerman.
A Front For Wealthy Interests
Thanks to the precedent set by Unity08 and Americans Elect, No Labels will not have to register as a political committee with the FEC and begin disclosing its donors until the organization selects a candidate for federal office.
The goal is to put forward a national unity ticket, though the group has said it could also back House and Senate candidates. The group plans to hold a nominating convention in Dallas in April 2024.
But even then, the No Labels Party would only need to disclose its donors moving forward and not retroactively, according to Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director at the watchdog group Documented.
\u201cNo Labels can avoid registering with the FEC or disclosing its donors because it has not yet nominated a candidate, and has been careful to say that it may not even nominate a candidate at all,\u201d said Fischer. \u201cThat means that the public may never know who is behind the $70 million spending blitz that could reshape the 2024 election.\u201d
No Labels has framed its ballot access campaign as \u201can insurance policy in the event both major parties nominate presidential candidates that the vast majority of Americans don\u2019t want,\u201d explaining that the organization \u201citself will not run a candidate, but we will have the launching pad, specifically in the form of ballot access across the country.\u201d
Its process for selecting candidates, however, appears fairly simple and substantially more controlled than past unity ticket efforts, which involved seeking out hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans to vote for potential presidential nominees on a website.
No Labels says it will select \u201ca diverse and distinguished group of Americans who will serve on a formal nominating committee\u201d to vet and determine candidates. Those candidates would then be ratified by No Labels delegates at its convention.
This does not sound like a particularly high bar to clear.
And unlike its predecessors, No Labels is already a well-known corporate influence operation. Originally launched in 2010, the organization has significant sway with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans.
While No Labels characterizes itself as \u201cthe voice for the great American majority who increasingly feel politically homeless,\u201d the organization is best understood as a front for Wall Street and other corporate interests who want to affect policy.
Major donors to No Labels have included billionaires in the private equity, hedge fund, real estate, and oil and gas industries, according to a leaked donor list obtained by the Daily Beast in 2018. The group has also courted Republican mega-donors.
No Labels\u2019 CEO, Nancy Jacobson, was a fundraiser for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, while her husband, corporate consultant Mark Penn, was a top Clinton campaign advisor. The group is co-chaired by lobbyist and former Sen. Joe Lieberman (Ind.-Conn.), as well as ex-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R). Manchin and Collins are \u201chonorary co-chairs.\u201d
No Labels also sponsors the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House of Representatives \u2014 an influential group of lawmakers from both parties that pushes supposedly bipartisan policy solutions in Congress.
In the first two years of President Joe Biden\u2019s first term, No Labels played a key role in helping gut the Democratic Party\u2019s legislative agenda.
The organization worked closely with conservative Democrats \u2014 including Manchin and Sinema in the Senate and Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) in the House \u2014 to slow and ultimately block the Build Back Better Act, Biden\u2019s anti-poverty, health care, and climate spending package, which would have been financed with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
No Labels also boosted Manchin and Sinema for opposing efforts by Democrats to end or reform the Senate filibuster. The rule, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation, functions as corporate America\u2019s kill switch over any bills that affect their interests.
As a result, last session, Republicans successfully filibustered a measure to force the disclosure of dark money donors as well as the Democratic Party\u2019s voting rights legislation.
In a leaked 2021 audio recording obtained by The Intercept, Jacobson, No Labels\u2019 CEO, spoke candidly about working to raise $20 million worth of direct campaign contributions for allied lawmakers in order to \u201creward\u201d them for voting in lockstep with the organization.
In February, No Labels held a strategy conference in Miami with corporate-friendly lawmakers, including Collins, Manchin, and Sinema.
\u201cThe session featured robust discussions surrounding the most pressing issues facing America ranging from the debt ceiling to immigration,\u201d the group wrote in a press release.
\u201cI Don\u2019t Rule Myself Out\u201d
No Labels is now working to secure federal ballot access in every state and D.C. So far, the group has made the ballot in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon.
Democrats in Arizona have raised the possibility that Sinema might run for reelection next year on the No Labels ballot line.
No Labels has not yet laid out its stances on most major political issues. Its website instead features messages about how politicians \u201cneed to listen more to the majority of Americans and less to extremists on the far left and right,\u201d and that \u201cAmerica isn\u2019t perfect, but we love this country and would not want to live any place else.\u201d
However, the group does declare, \u201cWe support, and are grateful for, the U.S. military.\u201d
This summer, No Labels says, it \u201cwill release our Commonsense Policy agenda, which articulates common sense solutions \u2014 supported by a broad majority of Americans \u2014 to some of America\u2019s toughest problems.\u201d
The organization additionally says it will only offer a ticket if \u201cneither the Democratic nor Republican party presidential nominees embrace or embody the values and commitments expressed in the No Labels mission statement.\u201d
That mission statement says that Americans should \u201chave the choice to vote for a presidential ticket that features strong, effective, and honest leaders who will commit to working closely with both parties to find common sense solutions to America\u2019s biggest problems.\u201d
If that all sounds exceedingly vague, there may be a good reason for it.
As Fischer, the campaign finance lawyer, points out, the lack of specifics from No Labels about its policy platform and what it hopes to see from the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees leaves plenty of room for dealmaking.
\u201cAt this point, No Labels isn\u2019t saying what \u2018values and commitments\u2019 they are looking for from a major party candidate,\u201d said Fischer. \u201cThis raises the specter of No Labels officials or donors using this leverage to extract backroom concessions.\u201d
In recent interviews, Manchin has refused to rule out running for president in 2024 on the No Labels ballot line, and praised the group\u2019s strategy.
\u201cIf enough Americans believe there is an option and the option is a threat to the extreme left and extreme right, it will be the greatest contribution to democracy, I believe,\u201d Manchin told the Washington Post, adding: \u201cI don\u2019t rule myself in and I don\u2019t rule myself out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n