No Labels convention chair Mike Rawlings said that Democrats will get pummeled by the former President's “Trump train” when responding to pushback that the group’s jump into the 2024 race would tilt the contest and hand the Oval Office back to the 45th president.
“We're gonna get run over by the Donald Trump Train,” Rawlings told CNN's Michael Smerconish on Saturday. “Okay. We didn't tie the Democrats to this track. We were the ones that saw this coming and say get off the track. Let's do this in a different way. Let's talk about common sense issues. Let's get common sense leadership. Let's take accountability in this country.”
Rawlings, the former Mayor of Dallas, countered the criticism that No Labels, a political group created to build support for a third-party presidential ticket, would be the culprit if their effort of potentially running a “unity ticket” shaves off enough votes from President Biden and gives back the White House to Trump.
“I'm fascinated with this theoretical fear-mongering that's going on that somehow what's going to keep America from leaping into Dante's nine circles of hell is what No Labels does,” Rawlings said.
No Labels decided on Friday to formally jump into the 2024 race during a private meeting. Hundreds of state delegates affirmed the decision. They point to polls showing that wide swaths of voters are willing to entertain independent and third-party candidates. The meeting convened just days after Super Tuesday election results showed that Biden and Trump are likely dead-locked in another general election showdown, a repeat of the 2020 contest.
Rawlings said the Democrats are blaming the wrong group when asked about No Labels acting as a “spoiler” in 2024. He said that Democrats should blame themselves since they chose Biden, again, as their nominee.
“Somehow this is No Labels’ fault,” Rawlings, the former CEO of Pizza Hut, said. “The Democrats, my Democrats, this is my party my whole life, okay have done this to themselves with quixotic, windmill-chasing, with bad, bad talking points, with the candidate that they chose. This is what the Democrats have done. No Labels is just speaking for the common sense majority that says we got to have a better way out of this thing."
Following the Friday private meeting, it was reported that Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, could be on the potential ticket, according to the Wall Street Journal. Duncan is meeting with Republican donors this weekend, with the meetings set up by No Labels, according to ABC News.
The Hill has reached out to No Labels for comment.
Duncan served as the state’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023. Duncan, a Republican, has been a critic of Trump.
“Meanwhile, our country remains on a collision course for the sequel no one wants,” Duncan wrote in an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month. “An increasingly frail President Joe Biden versus an increasingly unhinged Trump, who could be a convicted felon before Election Day 2024.”
