No Labels Wants to Raise $70 Million for Its Third-Party Effort. Its Momentum Is Unclear.

No Labels has made it very clear: It wants to raise $70 million to prepare for a possible third-party presidential bid.

Whether the group is anywhere near meeting that goal is far less clear.

Top officials with No Labels have given a range of figures for months when asked publicly about their fundraising. And the group only has to reveal a sliver of information on their incoming funds.

In June, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Ryan Clancy, the group’s chief strategist, said at a town hall that No Labels was “about two-thirds of the way there" towards raising the $70 million the group believes it needs for ballot access, putting the number around $46 million.

But that was the same number that David Brooks from the New York Times reported in September 2022, ten months earlier. “No Labels operation is a $70 million effort, of which $46 million has already been raised or pledged,” Brooks wrote.

The group has enlisted former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman as its founding chairman. During a Fox News interview in May, Lieberman said that No Labels had raised $30 million “as part of its effort to get on the ballot in all 50 states.”

The disconnect in No Labels’ public fundraising pronouncements raises questions about how much the group is actually collecting for its ballot access initiative and whether the effort has significant momentum after rounds of critical press that probed whether the group could eventually help former President Donald Trump to be elected by splitting the anti-Trump vote.

Asked about these disparate comments on their fundraising efforts, No Labels spokesperson Maryanne Martini said, “Our fundraising is on pace for our insurance policy project and our movement building activities.”

No Labels’ effort to get on the presidential ballot nationwide has caused plenty of agita among top Democrats. Many of them have lambasted the effort and argue it will do nothing more than undermine President Joe Biden’s reelection bid and boost former President Donald Trump, should he win the Republican Party’s nomination.

Progressives have recently stepped up their efforts to undermine the ballot access campaign, sending letters to secretaries of state across the country to call on them to “investigate the work and practices of No Labels’ staff and canvassers” and accusing the group of “potentially misleading voters” after the Maine secretary of state accused the group of doing so.

“There is one obvious way that Trump could win,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former top adviser to then-President Barack Obama, recently wrote about No Labels. “It keeps me up at night because it’s how he won in 2016. It’s staring us all in the face — a third-party candidate. And specifically, a third-party candidate named Joe Manchin.”

Manchin has yet to announce whether he will run for reelection to the Senate and has openly flirted with the idea of running for President. He has said that he will decide on his “political future” in December.

In response to the pressure, Dr. Ben Chavis, the Democratic co-chair of No Labels, told NBC News that the group “is not and will not be a spoiler in favor of Donald Trump in 2024” and that they would “stand down” if polls show Biden “way, way out ahead” of Trump.

The amount of money No Labels is raising is not the only question that Democrats have about the group’s efforts. To date, No Labels leaders have declined to reveal who is funding its ballot access operation, which they are not required to do because they operate as a 501(c)(4) organization.

Filings from the 501(c)(4) with the IRS have disclosed people associated with the group and the fact that they took in over $11 million in both 2020 and 2021, but not who donated the money.

“We know how the game is played these days, which is [if] people don’t like your organization, what’s the easiest way to destroy it? Well, go find the donor list and go start intimidating them in their place of work and harassing them on social media,” Clancy told Politico in June.

Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is supportive of the No Labels effort, said the pressure that the group is under from Democrats “validates what they are doing.”

“Of course, [Democrats] want it to be a referendum on Trump. I would too if I were them,” Dent said. “It’s just not 2020 anymore.”