Third-Party Politics (US)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Has No Labels Become a Stalking Horse for Trump?

      by

      No Labels, a Washington-based organization run by political and corporate insiders, finds itself in an awkward situation.After its founding in 2010, the group was praised by moderates in both parties as a force for cooperation and consensus. Now however, No Labels is a target of criticism because of its plan to place a presidential and a vice-presidential nominee of its own choosing on the 2024 ballot — a step that could tip the outcome in favor of Donald Trump if he once again wins the Republican nomination.No Labels officials contend that their polling suggests that their ticket could win.Numerous factors exacerbate the suspicion that whatever its intentions are (or were), the organization has functionally become an asset to the Trump campaign and a threat to the re-election of Joe Biden.Leaks to the media that prominent Republican donors, including Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’s benefactor, are contributing to No Labels — which is well on its way to raising $70 million — suggest that some major donors to No Labels see the organization as a means to promote Republican goals.No Labels, in turn, has declined to disclose its donors, and the secrecy has served to intensify the concern that some of its contributors are using the organization’s plan to run a third-party ticket to weaken the Biden campaign.The founder and chief executive of No Labels, Nancy Jacobson, was previously a prominent Democratic fund-raiser. She is married to Mark Penn, a consultant and pollster for Bill and Hillary Clinton, from both of whom Penn eventually became alienated.During the Trump presidency, Penn publicly voiced support for Trump’s policies on a number of key issues, in newspaper columns and during appearances on Fox News. Penn is chief executive and chairman of Stagwell Inc., which in turn owns a polling firm, HarrisX, that conducts surveys for No Labels. Penn says he has “no role, real or imagined, in this No Labels effort.”The fear in many quarters — from Republican consultants who are members of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project to Democrats of all ideological stripes — is that if the No Labels’ third-party campaign is carried out, it will help elect Trump.On April 2, Stuart Stevens, a strategist for the 2012 Mitt Romney campaign and a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, wrote on X (formerly Twitter):A 3rd party candidate like @NoLabelsOrg is shopping for will all but guarantee a Trump victory. If you are supporting that candidate, you are helping elect Trump. If that’s your goal, just be honest. With a 3rd party candidate, @NoLabelsOrg is operating as arm of Trump campaign.Members of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, which No Labels helped found in 2017, now accuse No Labels of covertly backing Trump.“No Labels,” Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, declared, “is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — re-electing Donald Trump as president.”Last summer, Jacobson told NBC that the group would abandon its plans to run an independent presidential ticket if she and others in the organization become convinced that such a bid would help Trump.“As a Democrat? Categorically, that will not happen,” Jacobson said. “This effort will never — we’ll pull it down.” She added: “We will not spoil for either side. The only reason to do this is to win.”In many quarters, the response to Jacobson’s claim has been incredulity.“Where’s the money — and there are significant bucks involved here — coming from?” asked Joe Klein, a former Time magazine columnist, in a June 21 Substack essay, “Mislabeled: No Labels Has Become a False Flag Trumpist Operation.”The answers, Klein notes, “are murky,” but:We do know one name: Harlan Crow, the sugar-daddy who has funded the leisure adventures of Clarence Thomas and the campaigns of other Republicans. Indeed, Crow told the New Republic in April:“I support No Labels because our government should be about what’s best for America, not what’s best for either political party. That’s also why I’ve supported candidates from both sides of the aisle who are willing to engage in civil discussions to move our country forward.” Ohh-kayyy. Not sure I believe that.An NBC survey in September found that the presence of third-party candidates on the ballot would shift the outcome from a 46-46 tie to a three point 39-36 Trump advantage over Biden.Equally important, NBC also found that the strongest appeal of third-party candidates is among constituencies Biden must carry, including voters pollsters call “persuadable”; low-income, working-class and middle-class voters of color; and voters who “somewhat” disapprove of Biden.In the media, the potential No Labels candidates most commonly mentioned are Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, who is 76 and recently announced his retirement from the Senate, and Larry Hogan, who is 67 and a former Republican governor of Maryland. The organization could also pick someone outside politics, including a military or corporate leader.Many Democratic leaders and organizations — including Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker; state Democratic chairs; Third Way, a Democratic think tank; and advisers to President Biden — contend that a No Labels candidate in the race would probably doom Biden’s chances of re-election.Critics of No Labels also argue, crucially, that a third-party candidate who was victorious in just one or two states could prevent both Trump and Biden from reaching the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency.An outcome like this would throw the election into the House of Representatives for what is known as a “contingent election.” If no candidate achieves an Electoral College majority, the Constitution provides that “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president. But in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.”At present, Republicans hold a majority of state delegations. In a contingent election in the 2025 House, even if the Democrats win back the House, the state-by-state voting would still be very likely to favor the Republican nominee.My Times colleague Peter Baker summed up Mark Penn’s pro-Trump activities in a 2018 article, “Mark Penn, Ex-Clinton Aide, Dismisses Mueller Inquiry, and the Clintons Along With It”:In a series of recent newspaper columns and appearances on Fox News, Mr. Penn has endorsed Mr. Trump’s argument that the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was instigated by secret Democratic intriguing. The inquiry, Mr. Penn said, has resorted “to storm trooper tactics” and has become a “scorched-earth effort” to “bring down Donald Trump.”Penn, Baker wrote, “suggested that ‘Clinton Foundation operatives’ got the F.B.I. to investigate Mr. Trump.”From a different angle, No Labels’ plan to nominate a “unity” presidential ticket of its own choosing would undercut the open nomination process reformers adopted more than a half-century ago.After the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention, insurgents forced the adoption of rules requiring that almost all delegates to presidential conventions be chosen through primaries or caucuses, effectively eviscerating the ability of party power brokers to pick nominees behind closed doors.Since then, the candidates of both major parties have been selected through an arduous process of state contests, in which the candidates seek majority or plurality support in an open competition with relatively full disclosure of contributions and expenditures.No Labels is gearing up to pick a third-party presidential ticket without the constraints and safeguards of primary elections and caucus contests.William Galston, a Brookings senior fellow and one of the 2010 co-founders of No Labels, resigned from the group earlier this year in protest over the group’s plan to run presidential candidates.Over Galston’s objections, No Labels began “in 2022 to explore the possibility of an independent bipartisan ticket,” Galston wrote in an email to me. Galston objected, he said, “not only because I thought this plan had no chance of succeeding, but also because I believed that anything that could divide the anti-Trump coalition was too risky to undertake.”Ultimately, Galston continued, he decided he “did not want to be associated with a venture that I believed (and continue to believe) will increase Donald Trump’s chances of re-entering the Oval Office.”No Labels’ core message is ostensibly a call for bipartisan cooperation so that government can end gridlock and address the problems facing the nation.In an interview with me conducted on Zoom, Ryan Clancy, No Labels’ chief strategist, contended that No Labels’ in-house polling shows that an independent ticket would have a good chance of winning a majority of Electoral College votes.According to Clancy, when voters were asked to choose between Biden, Trump and “an independent, moderate alternative,” 60 percent chose the independent alternative. “We could afford to lose 20 percent and still win the Electoral College,” he said.Clancy defended No Labels’ decision to keep donors’ names secret, arguing that Democratic groups “have explicitly said they want to lean on our supporters” to pressure them to jump ship. “These groups are coming after us.”Jacobson, who was also present on the Zoom interview, said that no final decision on running a third-party candidate will be made until after the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5, 2024. Sixteen states will hold primaries or caucuses that day, along with American Samoa, and the nominees of both major parties will presumably become apparent.Jacobson said that all bets are off in the event that either Trump or Biden is defeated in the primaries or withdraws. Clancy said No Labels has acquired ballot access in 12 states, with a goal of 34 to be achieved before any nominees are picked. Ballot access in the remaining states and other jurisdictions would be up to the actual candidates to obtain.One of the many questions facing No Labels is how the organization can select nominees without looking as if the candidates have been chosen in a less-than-democratic process by a small group of No Labels leaders.“We have not solidified that process,” Jacobson said in the Zoom interview.I asked Galston how decisions were made at No Labels during the years he was associated with the group. He replied:The decision-making structure was always a bit of a mystery to me. There were several advisory committees and a board, but Nancy Jacobson, the C.E.O., always seemed to be the ultimate authority. My hunch is that a handful of people — the co-chairs, the lawyers, the largest funders, perhaps others — had an informal veto in key decisions, but Nancy was always focused and persuasive, adept at building internal coalitions and marginalizing dissent.“In my experience,” he added, “she almost always got her way.”I asked officials of No Labels a series of questions about decision-making, finances and organizational structure. Clancy replied by email. Here are some of the questions and answers:Is No Labels a political party?A political party, Clancy replied, “fields candidates up and down the ballot, engages in election activity year after year and spends resources during the general election to help their nominees win. No Labels, Inc., which is a 501(c) (4) social welfare organization, does not do any of this.”No Labels, Inc., Clancy continued, “is only doing ballot access work for one office and for one election. And if No Labels, Inc. does end up offering its ballot line to an independent unity ticket, it will not help fund or run that campaign.”Why don’t you disclose the names and amounts given by donors? You say you want to prevent harassment, but all political parties reveal their donors. Shouldn’t the financial supporters of a movement that could elect a president or significantly influence the outcome of the next election be a matter of public record?No Labels, Inc. was launched as a 501(c) (4) fourteen years ago and we have never disclosed the individual names of our supporters because they have a right to privacy. Again, No Labels, Inc. is not a political party and we do not participate in elections so therefore do not have a responsibility to report our funding.How likely is it that a No Labels ticket would prevent any candidate from getting 270 Electoral College voters, thus making it a contingent election thrown into the House?No Labels will only offer our ballot line to a unity ticket if we believe it has the chance to win outright in the Electoral College. We believe this is possible, as we have done extensive polling and modeling in all 50 states featuring surveys of tens of thousands of voters, with representative samples from every state. This shows a potential path to victory for a unity ticket in 25 states representing 286 electoral votes.How will the No Labels presidential candidate be chosen?We are still determining the process for how we would select a unity ticket.How many members does No Labels have? How many members pay dues and what are the dues?No Labels, Inc. has nearly 100,000 members who either pay dues or take various actions on behalf of the organization and we have 836,504 email subscribers.Third Way, a Democratic centrist group, is one of the leading critics of No Labels’ plans to pick a third-party presidential ticket. Matt Bennett, a vice president at Third Way, disputed No Labels’ fundamental claim that its ticket could beat both Biden and Trump:No one — absolutely not a soul — outside of No Labels thinks they can actually win the election. And that — not the question of which side they’d hurt more as a spoiler — is at the heart of this issue. They’ve said they will pull the plug on this endeavor if they can’t win. So, the real question is why they cannot see the overwhelming evidence of the hopelessness of their cause when it’s so blindingly obvious.Third Way has published at least 15 reports, commentaries and memos faulting No Labels, including an analysis of No Labels’ own polling that Third Way contends actually shows “Biden wins the necessary battlegrounds in a two-way race, but No Labels spoils for Trump in a three-way contest.”In recent weeks, Democrats have escalated their attacks on the No Labels plan.On Nov. 2, Pelosi told reporters, “No Labels is perilous to our democracy.”I asked a number of election experts to assess the No Labels initiative, its financing and its procedures for selecting nominees.Didi Kuo, manager of Stanford University’s Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, replied to my queries by email.“While there is precedent for third-party candidates in presidential elections,” she wrote, “there is little precedent for an organization backwards-engineering a presidential ticket and agenda.”I asked her whether No Labels should be required to register as a political party.If No Labels fields candidates, it should register as a political party. It has the basic structure of a modern electoral organization, with leaders, data and campaign analysts, fund-raisers, and volunteers. If it is going to use this organization to support candidates running with its label, it is functionally a party — and needs to be subject to the same rules and regulations as the other parties.A No Labels candidate, Kuo continued,will likely serve as a spoiler in what is shaping up to be a very tight race between President Biden and former President Trump. Given where No Labels is trying to position itself on the partisan spectrum, it is very likely that its candidate would draw votes from President Biden, rather than Donald Trump — with grave consequences for American democracy.Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, argued thatas long as this ticket is on the ballot in some competitive states, it can still have a substantial impact. Even if it only pulls 1 percent of the vote or so, it matters a great deal whether it pulls more from the Democrats or the Republicans in states like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia. It could end up changing the outcome of the election even without winning very many votes.The failure to disclose donors has been a sticking point. I asked Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, a campaign-finance reform organization, for his assessment. “In my view,” he replied, “when No Labels started qualifying in various states to be on the ballot to run a presidential candidate they were functioning as a political organization under I.R.S. law and should have registered as such under section 527 of the I.R.S. Code and disclosed their donors.”It is, Wertheimer continued, “an oxymoron to be a nonprofit group operating under section 501(c) (4) and at the same time operate as a political party to run a candidate for president.”None of the experts I contacted voiced support for the No Labels endeavor, and some, especially Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, (no relation to Nancy Jacobson), were harsh in their criticism:I don’t anticipate anything positive coming out of their efforts. If they nominate someone plausibly characterized as a centrist, I think he or she would take more votes from Biden than from Trump, for their positions would overlap more with Biden’s than with Trump’s.He went on:The whole idea of No Labels is weird. The value of the party label for most voters is to give them a pretty clear sign of where they stand on a range of issues. No Labels seems to have an agenda consisting of ideas for policy compromises in the areas of immigration, the economy, medical care, and Social Security, avoiding social issues such as abortion or L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Presumably, that’s what the No Labels label would tell voters about the positions of any candidate the organization supported. If so, it would be a label. Otherwise, it just means “None of the above.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Latino Business Advocate Stung by Misconduct Claims Resurfaces With ‘No Labels’

      by

      Javier Palomarez, who stepped down as chief of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce after he was accused of financial misconduct and sexual harassment, is working with the centrist group.No Labels, the centrist organization that is vying to gain ballot access for the 2024 presidential election, has joined forces with Javier Palomarez, an advocate of Hispanic-owned businesses with a history of allegations of workplace financial misconduct and sexual harassment.In 2018, Mr. Palomarez stepped down from his job as chief executive of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce while facing accusations that he had padded his pay and had made an unwanted pass at his female chief of staff. He denied those allegations and later sued the chamber. He also sued one of the group’s former directors, saying that he had been sexually harassed. Both matters were ultimately settled out of court in 2019.In an interview on Tuesday evening, Mr. Palomarez said his departure from the Hispanic Chamber was a result of a witch hunt against him because he elected to work with instead of against the Trump administration. He said he “won the lawsuits” against his accusers, though he said the terms of the settlements remained confidential. He declined to reveal them. “All I can do is tell you I maintained my innocence then and I maintain it now,” he said.Mr. Palomarez is a self-described Democrat who resigned from a diversity coalition convened by the Trump administration over its efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He appears on cable news occasionally to criticize President Biden on issues like immigration and domestic energy production. He is also the founder and chief executive of an advocacy organization with a mission similar to that of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, his former employer, and is now a volunteer leader at No Labels.During a video meeting with No Labels followers on Tuesday evening, Mr. Palomarez spoke of the importance of engaging Hispanic voters as part of any presidential ticket.“Our nation is at a transit point. Never before have we been so disillusioned by our elected officials and our leaders,” he said to the roughly 300 participants on the call. “One thing is clear: The Hispanic electorate will play a decisive role in the elections of 2024.”Mr. Palomarez, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, said his role at No Labels would be as a conduit to the Hispanic community, which he said had been harmed by the Biden administration’s energy policies.Feedback from No Labels supporters, he said, is that it would be better to replace Mr. Biden with a Republican.“There’s a sense that this White House has lost touch,” he said. “From an economic perspective, a Republican would be better suited to run the country.”But before the meeting with Mr. Palomarez, some invitees were privately fuming about his involvement.“It was alarming to see his role in a big organization like No Labels, though clearly, No Labels lacks a lot of credibility when it comes to national politics,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist who was on the board of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce when Mr. Palomarez came under fire. “I hope he has changed.”Nancy Jacobson, the No Labels chief executive, said Tuesday that she wasn’t aware of the 2018 allegations against Mr. Palomarez.No Labels, which is exploring the possibility of running a so-called presidential unity ticket that could include both a Republican and a Democrat, has qualified for the presidential ballot in 12 states. But its effort has stalled in others — a result of rules in some states that require new third-party organizations to have a candidate to secure ballot access.Mr. Biden’s allies view No Labels as an existential threat because of the competition it could create for both votes and dollars. As a result, Democrats have broadly shunned No Labels, a result in part of a campaign from the group Third Way to keep top party members and donors from participating with the organization.They may have reason for concern. On the call Tuesday, Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said a survey he recently conducted for the Spanish-language news network Univision showed that the independent presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West were pulling more support from Mr. Biden than they were from former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Newhouse showed a slide that had Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump tied in a two-way race, but Mr. Trump ahead in a race with several other candidates on the ballot.Ms. Jacobson has in recent weeks told potential donors that the group will name a Republican to lead its presidential ticket at a planned convention in April. In 2021, three years after departing the commerce organization, Mr. Palomarez founded the United States Hispanic Business Council, whose stated mission is to “empower Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States by advocating for people and policies that support their advancement.” Ms. Jacobson said that Mr. Palomarez was recommended highly to No Labels.“Several people referred him to our organization as an extremely competent leader who could add value and perspective as a volunteer,” she said. Ms Jacobson said Mr. Palomarez would not be paid. She added that he would be working with the No Labels co-chairs but did not say what his responsibilities would be. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How R.F.K. Jr.’s Causes Made Him Millions of Dollars

      by

      In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned more than $500,000 as the chairman and top lawyer at Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit organization that he has helped build into a leading spreader of anti-vaccine falsehoods and a platform for launching his independent bid for the White House.The compensation was almost three times as high as the amount paid to the organization’s president, but it was not Mr. Kennedy’s biggest source of income. Neither was his family’s fabled wealth. Instead, most of his earnings around the same time came from law firms — a total of $7 million for lending them his name, connections and expertise to sue major companies.Throughout his long public life, Mr. Kennedy has cultivated an image as a man committed to a greater good, the blessing and burden of belonging to one of America’s most storied political families. Whether cleaning up rivers as an environmentalist or railing against the purported dangers of inoculations, he has said he is driven by his family’s legacy of civic duty and sacrifice.He built his presidential run around similar themes, even as his cousin dismissed the campaign as a “vanity project” and other relatives disavowed his beliefs. On the trail, Mr. Kennedy has delivered a populist message of anti-corporate rhetoric and debunked science while invoking a powerful lineage: his uncles, former President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy, and his father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.“RFK Jr. began a career of public services as soon as he passed the NY State Bar,” reads one of the top lines on his campaign website.In a 2018 book, he credited his mother, Ethel, for instilling important values. “She tried to give us the sense that we mustn’t be satisfied with ‘making a big pile for ourselves and whoever dies with the most stuff wins,’” Mr. Kennedy wrote. “Our lives, she taught us, should serve a higher purpose.”But an examination of Mr. Kennedy’s finances by The New York Times, including public filings and almost two dozen interviews as well as tax returns and other documents not previously made public, showed that while he appears to believe in the causes he champions, they have also had a practical benefit: His crusades, backed by the power of his name, have earned him tens of millions of dollars.In his 2018 book, Mr. Kennedy credited his mother for instilling important values.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesCampaign events have emphasized Mr. Kennedy’s famed political family.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy inherited many things from his family — a charismatic presence, a gift for public speaking, a place among the nation’s elite — but not necessarily the kind of money that would support a life of both altruism and the trappings of wealth he seems to enjoy, The Times found. His grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, poured a fortune into trust funds for his descendants, helping to support the political ambitions of his sons. But Mr. Kennedy came into a relatively modest portion.Behind much of his public career has been a relentless private hustle: board positions and advisory gigs, side deals with law firms, book contracts and an exhausting schedule of paid speeches, once upward of 60 a year by his own count.While most people have to work, Mr. Kennedy did not always settle for the six-figure salary he was earning in positions with nonprofits. For decades, he has entwined his loftier missions with opportunities for enrichment. In addition to his salary at Children’s Health Defense, for instance, he stands to profit personally from lawsuits, including against the pharmaceutical giant Merck over a common vaccine for children.When Mr. Kennedy was still best known as an environmentalist, he met Alan Salzman, an investor in clean technology companies, and was intrigued: Mr. Kennedy wanted to find alternatives to carbon-based energy, “which I think is the biggest enemy to American democracy and the environment,” he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The Times.“And I also saw it as an opportunity to make some money for my family,” he continued.Mr. Kennedy would earn millions of dollars over at least eight years from work connected to Mr. Salzman’s venture capital firm, VantagePoint, including promoting a project that other environmentalists opposed.In an interview, Mr. Kennedy said that he was proud of giving his family a good life while promoting his causes.“I have been able to use the various gifts I’ve been given — education, the contacts and the value of a name that a generation in my family put a lot of effort into enhancing and retaining its value,” he said. “I’m grateful that I’ve been given those gifts and that I am able to do well by doing good.”His campaign said in a statement that he had “never put a need or desire to make money ahead of his values and moral compass.”Recently, Mr. Kennedy’s presidential bid has gained some traction. In a poll conducted last month by The Times and Siena College, 24 percent of voters in battleground states said they would support Mr. Kennedy in a theoretical matchup between him, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate.In the campaign, Mr. Kennedy has cast himself as an heir to his family’s mystique. Yet what has at times looked from the outside like the glamorous life of a dynastic prince has occasionally been underwritten by others.Wealthy friends were behind the purchase of the home Mr. Kennedy used on the family compound on Cape Cod, records show. He had an arrangement with a major environmental nonprofit group to pay for his children to accompany him on work trips, and he accepted a free Lexus as part of a promotional event for green vehicles.“The Kennedys’ wealth is inextricably intertwined with people’s impression of the Kennedys — and that isn’t a surprise when you think their grandfather amassed one of America’s biggest fortunes when his kids were young,” said Fredrik Logevall, a historian at Harvard who is writing a two-volume biography of John F. Kennedy.“But two generations later,” Professor Logevall said, “some family members have more of the money than others.”From left: Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.; Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.; Robert F. Kennedy; and John F. Kennedy in 1939.Boston Globe via Associated PressA Grandfather’s WealthJoseph Kennedy’s estate, widely believed to be valued at roughly $500 million when he died in 1969 (about $4.2 billion in today’s dollars), was left largely in trusts for his descendants.Robert Kennedy had been assassinated the previous year while running for the Democratic nomination for president. He left half his estate to Ethel and divided the remainder equally among his children, according to documents filed in Manhattan Surrogate Court. But after an expensive campaign, he died with heavy debt, and more than half of his estate went to pay it off.While the court documents put the senator’s total estate at $1.6 million, there was more, shrouded in trusts whose value is not public. Still, disclosure forms Mr. Kennedy filed with the Federal Election Commission as part of his bid for the presidency, as well as other documents, provide some insight into his portion of the family wealth.Mr. Kennedy owns between $4 million and $15 million in inherited assets, held in trusts — the biggest, a stake in Wolf Point, a Chicago real estate development built on land his grandfather bought decades ago. Over the years, Mr. Kennedy has enjoyed large one-time distributions from his trust funds when assets were sold, according to bank records and public documents.But the trusts do not tend to generate much steady income: He received between roughly $29,000 and $90,500 over a recent 18-month period, according to the F.E.C. filing. While certainly a boon, it is far from enough to finance Mr. Kennedy’s lifestyle: At one point, a little over a decade ago, he estimated that his annual household expenses were $1.4 million.“I have never gotten a lot of money from my family,” Mr. Kennedy told The Times.He said his biggest expense in recent years was his children’s education. He drives, he said, a 1998 minivan. But he also lives with his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, in a $6 million home in Brentwood, an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood.Mr. Kennedy in 1973 with his mother, Ethel, and a mural depicting his father, five years after his assassination.Marty Lederhandler/Associated PressMr. Kennedy said that one reason his branch of the family never enjoyed the clan’s presumed riches, in addition to his father’s debt, is that he was one of 11 children, leaving him with less inherited money than other members of his generation. (When his cousin John F. Kennedy Jr. died in 1999, he left a $250,000 bequest to Mr. Kennedy.)In the 2012 deposition, which Mr. Kennedy gave during his bitter divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, he said Ethel Kennedy was “broke,” and family members secretly helped cover her living expenses.“Those of us who stay at her house pay her, and she doesn’t know she’s being paid,” he said.In the interview with The Times, Mr. Kennedy said that his mother, now 95, is no longer struggling financially.Mr. Kennedy in a 2001 rowing race on New York’s Hudson River, which he is credited with helping to clean up.Evan Agostini/Getty ImagesA High-Flying LifeBy the year 2000, after a bumpy early adulthood that included an arrest for heroin possession, Mr. Kennedy was a nationally recognized environmental lawyer. The previous year, he had been named a hero of the planet by Time magazine for his work with the Riverkeeper organization, among the groups credited with cleaning up New York’s polluted Hudson River.As a lawyer, he was on the payrolls of both the environmental litigation clinic at Pace University’s law school and the Natural Resources Defense Council, where his salary was subsidized by Riverkeeper, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.That year, Mr. Kennedy saw an opportunity that would eventually net him millions of dollars.He co-founded a law firm, Kennedy & Madonna, with Kevin Madonna, a Pace Law graduate who had worked at the clinic. The firm allowed Mr. Kennedy to target polluters while profiting at a scale far beyond his nonprofit salaries. Kennedy & Madonna teamed up with other firms on class-action lawsuits against major corporations, including Dupont and the Southern California Gas Company, and took a cut of any proceeds.Although Mr. Kennedy was listed first in the firm’s name, he said in his 2012 divorce case that his partner dealt with most of the detailed legal work. Mr. Kennedy typically handled depositions and court appearances — moments when his famous name and presence would have the strongest effect. Mr. Madonna declined to comment.In 2002, Mr. Kennedy also forged a relationship with a personal-injury law firm in Pensacola, Fla. He was paid to do a radio show with one of the firm’s partners, and was listed as “of counsel” at the firm, which did some class-action environmental litigation.It was adding up to a good living, by most standards. By 2008, his jobs at the Florida firm and the nonprofits were bringing in about $400,000 a year. His trust funds and investments connected to his grandfather generated at least $150,000, according to his tax return.Mr. Kennedy with his third wife, the actress Cheryl Hines.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIncome from Kennedy & Madonna could be bumpy. For instance, from 2008 through 2010, the firm produced virtually no income, tax records show. But in 2011 Mr. Kennedy received $700,000, part of the firm’s share of a legal settlement with Ford Motor.Still, Mr. Kennedy was leading an expensive life between his home in Bedford, N.Y., a wealthy enclave north of Manhattan, where he lived with his wife and children, and the home he was using on Cape Cod. He bought the Bedford house in the 1980s, with financing from the sale of a luxury Manhattan apartment that a close family friend had willed to him, records show.In 2010, Mr. Kennedy’s household expenses reached $1.4 million. The mortgage and a home-equity loan on the Bedford property cost about $191,000. Memberships to a yacht club and other organizations ran him more than $14,000, while nannies and housekeepers cost more than $70,000. Pool maintenance was upward of $12,000. On top of those expenses, his assistant earned roughly $200,000.His use of the home at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., was made possible by wealthy friends, The Times found. It had been purchased by a lawyer with ties to Wendy Abrams, a Chicago-based philanthropist who has donated millions of dollars to environmental causes, including some of Mr. Kennedy’s, records show.In the interview, Mr. Kennedy said Ms. Abrams and her husband, whom he described as his closest friends, stepped in because he did not have enough money to buy the home when it came up for sale.The house, a six-bedroom with traditional gray shingles, was bought in 2008 for $2.5 million. For years, Mr. Kennedy paid $4,000 a month in rent. The lease, which was reviewed by The Times, shows that he had an option to buy the home for the original purchase price, which he did in 2020.The Abramses, Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition, had also footed the bill for a vacation to Jamaica for him; his then-girlfriend, Ms. Hines; and their respective children, while the Natural Resources Defense Council sometimes paid for his children to travel with him.“All my vacations are paid for. So I just, I try not to spend money,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.Ms. Abrams told The Times she commonly hosted friends in rented vacation homes. Mr. Kennedy said in his interview with The Times that his work for the N.R.D.C. could involve spending weeks in other countries, and the nonprofit agreed to pay for his children to travel to see him. The N.R.D.C. declined to comment.Mr. Kennedy also accepted a free Lexus from Toyota, The Times found. He said he received the car when he helped the automaker promote charging stations for electric vehicles in California.While working at VantagePoint Capital Partners, Mr. Kennedy took paying gigs with companies in which the venture capital firm had invested, including a solar plant developer building a project in the Mojave Desert. Ethan Miller/Getty Images/Getty ImagesA Shadow CareerIn addition to his jobs with nonprofits and his law firms, Mr. Kennedy turned to paid speeches as a big source of income. He said he could charge as much as $250,000 for a talk overseas, and at least $25,000 for others.By the time he entered into divorce proceedings with Ms. Richardson Kennedy, he was on the road at a frenetic pace, at one point giving more than 60 speeches a year. (Ms. Richardson Kennedy died by suicide in 2012, before the divorce was final.)If he wasn’t around enough to put in a traditional workweek at any one organization, his name and natural charisma certainly raised their profiles and drew celebrities and deep-pocketed benefactors to their events, including the actors Pierce Brosnan, Alec Baldwin and Ms. Hines.At the same time, Mr. Kennedy’s high-profile environmental work opened the door to a lucrative shadow career as a corporate director and consultant. His reputation, experience and wide network of contacts had value: He could make introductions, offer advice or help secure financing.A turning point had come in 2005. Mr. Kennedy gave a speech at the home of Mr. Salzman, the managing partner of VantagePoint Capital Partners, then one of California’s most prominent venture capital firms. It was an early investor in Tesla, the electric carmaker, and was known for backing companies that were offering solutions to the planet’s environmental problems.Mr. Salzman hired Mr. Kennedy in 2007, initially paying him $100,000 a year to consult on potential investments. “He was obviously passionate about clean water, but also well-connected and very knowledgeable,” Mr. Salzman told The Times.In 2009 Mr. Kennedy became a partner, earning $340,000 at VantagePoint, in addition to his other sources of income. Two years later his salary had jumped to more than $750,000, records show.“He was obviously passionate about clean water, but also well-connected and very knowledgeable,” said Alan Salzman, managing partner of VantagePoint.Andrew Harrer/BloombergMr. Kennedy’s position at VantagePoint led to other paying gigs at companies in which the fund had invested. For instance, he took in $80,000 a year from BrightSource, a developer of large-scale solar plants.That work put him in conflict with environmentalists over two projects BrightSource was planning in California. The first was set for the Ivanpah Valley, in the desert near Nevada. A number of environmental groups opposed the idea, saying it threatened desert tortoises and vegetation.Mr. Kennedy leaned on his contacts in the Obama administration to secure a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for the project in 2011. “I essentially saved the company,” Mr. Kennedy said in the 2012 deposition.BrightSource also wanted to locate a massive solar power farm in a region of the Mojave Desert, on land previously earmarked for conservation. David Myers, president of the Wildlands Conservancy, was among its most vocal opponents, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who died this fall, and officials from the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity.Mr. Myers said he had long admired Mr. Kennedy’s work in New York and was devastated by his involvement in pushing the California project. “He was like a hero, in his own mind,” Mr. Myers said. After a protracted fight, BrightSource walked away from the venture.In the interview with The Times, Mr. Kennedy said he had sympathy for the point of view of the project’s opponents, but he believed it was vital to promote solar energy.Ultimately, Mr. Kennedy worked for or served on the boards of at least 16 companies, all while juggling his speaking commitments, his duties at the nonprofits that were paying him and his obligations to his law firm. He joined the board of a holding company that owned a troubled for-profit college in New York, was a paid adviser to an Arizona environmental company known for hiring boldface names and was on the board of a Florida company that made red-light cameras.Mr. Kennedy ended up on the board of that company, Smart Citation Management, because a friend knew he was hard up for cash and recommended him for the position, he said in the 2012 deposition. George K. Stephenson, the president of Smart Citation, described Mr. Kennedy as a “very engaged” board member.At least one company with ties to the Kennedy family still has Mr. Kennedy on its payroll. Marwood Group, a political research firm, has paid him $10,000 a month for years, records show.Its president and founder is Ted Kennedy Jr., Mr. Kennedy’s cousin. The company did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Kennedy said he served as an adviser and consultant.Building on his anti-vaccine work, Mr. Kennedy fought Covid-era restrictions.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesA Shift to VaccinesAround the time Mr. Kennedy spoke at Mr. Salzman’s house, he became interested in another topic: mercury in vaccines.For years, Mr. Kennedy had been warning about mercury contamination from coal-fired power plants, and he has said that concern grew to include vaccines when the mother of a “vaccine-injured child” came to him for help. In 2005 he wrote an article, published in Rolling Stone and Salon, that blamed thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines, for a rise in autism in children.Although both news outlets later withdrew the article after finding that some of its claims were wrong or dubious, and Mr. Kennedy was widely criticized by the scientific community, he dove headlong into his effort. He began giving speeches on the topic, and wrote a book about it in 2015. He did not give up his environmental work: That same year, he began taking about $200,000 in annual salary from Waterkeeper Alliance, a national organization with a mission to clean up waterways.But he also joined the board of a nonprofit organization called the World Mercury Project, which aimed to eliminate mercury exposure in many arenas. In 2018, with Mr. Kennedy’s help, it was rebranded as Children’s Health Defense.Mr. Kennedy proved to be an effective fund-raiser for the fledgling group, just as he had for his environmental allies, even selling $10 raffle tickets to win a tour of the Cape Cod compound. In 2021, the last year for which data is available, the group’s annual revenue was almost $16 million. With an impressive war chest, Children’s Health Defense has become one of the country’s leading spreaders of vaccine misinformation.As Mr. Kennedy’s focus shifted more and more to vaccine skepticism, he parted ways with the environmental groups that had defined so much of his public life. In 2017 he told Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, that his vaccine work had made him a pariah in some circles and cost him work.“It’s been probably the worst career move that I’ve ever made,” he said. When Mr. Carlson asked him if he was “getting paid for this,” Mr. Kennedy replied: “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m getting unpaid for this.”Except for the Marwood Group, Mr. Kennedy no longer holds paid board positions, according to his F.E.C. filing, and he reported taking in a much-diminished $24,000 in speaking fees. But his effort on vaccines has also been a source of income that would be impressive by many measures.By 2021, the last full year for which data is available, he was making slightly more than $500,000 a year at Children’s Health Defense, up from $255,000 in 2019.After writing his book about thimerosal, he returned to his publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, to write a scathing book in 2021 about Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s long-serving top infectious disease specialist who became a focus of rage for people skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine.The book sold well, more than 500,000 copies in hardcover, according to Circana BookScan. Mr. Kennedy said he donated the proceeds to Children’s Health Defense, but he received a $125,000 consulting fee from the publisher over this year and last for referring other authors.Similar to his playbook as an environmentalist, Mr. Kennedy has established profitable relationships with law firms, including one that handles legal work for Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy told The Times that because he believed his stance on vaccines had cost him income, he had an agreement with Children’s Health Defense to supplement his salary with outside legal work.“I had these big bills that I just couldn’t pay on a badly diminished salary,” he told The Times.“I said, ‘I need an opportunity to make more because that is not going to do it,’” Mr. Kennedy said. Under the deal, he would share the proceeds from any legal wins or settlements with the organization.One firm, the California-based Wisner Baum, paid him $1.6 million over the 18 months ending in June, according to his F.E.C. filing. Over the years, he has worked on environmental cases for Wisner Baum, including as a lawyer on the team that won a $290 million judgment against the chemical giant Monsanto, the maker of Roundup weed killer.More recently, however, Mr. Kennedy has been listed as co-counsel on dozens of lawsuits that Wisner Baum has brought against the pharmaceutical company Merck for injuries it says were caused by a vaccine formulated to prevent the transmission of human papillomavirus.The Children’s Health Defense website also scouts clients for Wisner Baum, encouraging parents to call the firm if they believe their child might have been harmed by the HPV vaccine.Another law firm, JW Howard Attorneys, paid Mr. Kennedy about $315,000 over the same 18-month period. JW Howard was one of the firms that handled a case brought by the Orange County Board of Education and Children’s Health Defense seeking to end the Covid-19 state of emergency that California declared in the spring of 2020.And this past January, JW Howard was counsel on a lawsuit filed by Children’s Health Defense and Mr. Kennedy against The Washington Post, Reuters and other news organizations, accusing them of colluding to stop the publication of certain Covid stories, among other allegations.Mr. Kennedy is also still a partner at Kennedy & Madonna. Between January 2022 and June 2023, he made $5 million for his work there, records show. The law firm, its website has emphasized, does not take vaccine cases.Kitty Bennett More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Speech and Antisemitism on Campus

      by

      More from our inbox:If Joe Manchin Runs for President …Jill Stein’s CandidacyPrivate Art CollectionsPro-Israel demonstrators at Columbia University in New York in mid-October.Jeenah Moon/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “How Are Students Expected to Live Like This on Campuses?,” by Jesse Wegman (Opinion, nytimes.com, Nov. 8):Mr. Wegman is correct that universities cannot live up to their ideals as havens for unfettered debate when their Jewish students feel physically threatened. And he rightly suggests necessary limits on a culture of free speech, including prohibitions on harassment and targeting based on ethnic or religious identity.But it is time for a broader interrogation of the vaunted Chicago Principles he cites, which hold that the only appropriate role for a university is to stay silent on matters of public controversy so that its constituents may fully debate it.I believe that a more important principle for a university — arguably its fundamental principle — is to seek and articulate truth. And in this case, the truth is clear: Hamas is a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel, that is not representative of the Palestinian people as a whole.To the extent the Chicago Principles prevent universities from stating that truth, they make honest debate more difficult, stain all pro-Palestinian students with the repugnant reputation of Hamas, and undermine university administrators’ ability to isolate and combat real antisemitism on campuses.There is no doubt that free expression is a paramount value in universities. But we can aspire higher. We can build our bastions of free speech on the foundational layers of moral clarity and intellectual integrity.(Rabbi) Ari BermanNew YorkThe writer is president of Yeshiva University.To the Editor:Re “What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech,” by Gabriel Diamond, Talia Dror and Jillian Lederman (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 11):Protecting free speech on campus requires bravery and intellectual honesty, not partisan definitions. As Jewish students, we share in the real fear surrounding the rise of violent threats against our communities. Yet, this fear cannot be addressed with definitions that marginalize legitimate Palestinian advocacy.The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism that the authors cite, which refers to “rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism,” is opposed even by several progressive, pro-Israel and Jewish organizations. Such critiques correctly cite the definition’s potential to “suppress legitimate free speech, criticism of Israeli government actions, and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”Institutions of higher education should, of course, address antisemitism; yet, adopting this broad definition would come at the expense of students’ and professors’ fundamental rights to free expression. Regardless of how uncomfortable certain phrases may make us, disagreements surrounding terminology and definitions must not be equated with the very real dangers of death threats, hate speech and physical violence.Upholding free speech requires empathy and consistency, and we must understand that intimidation and fear on campuses are real, and they are not felt only or even primarily by Jewish students.Eliana BlumbergRita FederMichael Farrell-RosenProvidence, R.I.The writers are students at Brown University.To the Editor:Re “At College, Debating When Speech Goes Too Far” (front page, Nov. 11):A key role of higher education is to nurture students intellectually and emotionally as they develop their ethical and moral compasses. Just as alumni have threatened to pull financial support of schools that do not call out terror and take a stance on antisemitism, members of university boards must require similar action.As a member of a university board of trustees whose president has publicly spoken up for morality and truth, and as an American who is shocked to see scenes unfolding that are reminiscent of 1930s Europe, I challenge all the university boards in the country to raise their voices and make their leadership accountable for what is happening on their campuses.There is zero tolerance for racism and zero tolerance for harassment of any kind on today’s campuses, and we should not rest until there is zero tolerance for antisemitism. Colleges should be places where truth is sought and where everyone feels safe. University leaders must step up and lead by example by first speaking up and then creating an action plan to combat hate and antisemitism.Lawrence D. PlattLos AngelesThe writer is a member of the board of trustees of Touro University.To the Editor:If college students directed this sort of hate speech against Black or Asian or L.G.B.T.Q. people, they would most likely be expelled or at least suspended. The fact that they aren’t speaks to the moral cowardice of university administrators.Joshua RosenbaumBrooklynIf Joe Manchin Runs for President …“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life,” Mr. Manchin said.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “In Blow to Senate Democrats, Manchin Will Not Run Again” (front page, Nov. 10):The concern spreading among “alarmed” Democrats that the prospective third-party presidential campaign of Senator Joe Manchin would draw more votes away from President Biden may be misplaced.Although he is a Democrat and caucuses and usually votes with the Democrats, many of Mr. Manchin’s positions are inconsistent with those in the base of the party, and he is not particularly liked by other segments of the party or left-leaning independents either.If he runs, rather than siphoning votes from the Biden-Harris ticket, he might draw as many, or more, anti-Democratic independents and disenchanted G.O.P. voters. That is especially the case if the Republican Party’s candidate is former President Donald Trump, as seems increasingly likely, and Mr. Manchin’s fusion running mate is a respectable Republican like Liz Cheney or even Nikki Haley.So, Democrats should take a page from the quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who, when a mainstay of the Green Bay Packers, periodically soothed uneasy fans with one word: “Relax.”Marshall H. TanickMinneapolisJill Stein’s CandidacyJill Stein will be running to the left of President Biden and is joining a group of third-party candidates who are making some Democrats fearful that they could siphon support from his re-election bid.Kim Raff for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Stein Plans to Seek Green Party’s Nomination for President” (news article, Nov. 11):There are two questions that all third-party candidates should ask themselves: First, do they really think they can win the presidency? If they are honest, I think they would respond, “Of course not.”Second question: Do they want Donald Trump to be president? Again, I think the answer for all of them would be, “Of course not.”Which then would reveal that ego is driving them and the desire for a larger, more public forum for their ideas. But the price of that drive could very well be catastrophic damage to our country and our democracy if Mr. Trump wins. And each third-party candidate dangerously increases the chances that could happen.Sally JorgensenSanta Cruz, Calif.Private Art CollectionsTo the Editor:Re “Will the Art World Need to Slash Its Prices?” (Arts, Nov. 4):It is auction season and masterpieces by Picasso, Monet and others will be sold, often by the descendants of dead billionaires to living billionaires for their very private collections.True lovers of art would donate these gems to museums, so the public can see them. Just another example of the greed of the wealthiest 1 percent, completely unconcerned about the rest of us.Jim DouglasOcean Grove, N.J. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Should Joe Manchin Run for President?

      by

      In the emotional life of the liberal mediasphere, there was so little space between the release of the New York Times/Siena poll showing President Biden losing to Donald Trump handily across a range of swing states (doom! doom!) and the Democratic overperformance in Tuesday’s elections (sweet relief!) that one of the striking features of the polling passed with relatively little comment.This was the remarkably strong showing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent candidacy. When added to the swing-state polls, Kennedy claimed 24 percent of registered voters against 35 percent for Trump and 33 percent for Biden.That number is notable along two dimensions. First, for showing Kennedy drawing close to equally from both likely nominees rather than obviously spoiling the race for one or the other. Second, for its sheer Ross Perotian magnitude, its striking-distance closeness to the major party candidates.Yet I don’t see a lot of people entertaining the “Kennedy wins!” scenario just yet, and for good reasons: Most notable third-party candidates eventually diminish, he may be artificially inflated by his famous name, and his crankishness is so overt (whereas Perot’s was gradually revealed) that many voters currently supporting him in protest of a Biden-Trump rematch may well abandon him after a light Googling.The world being strange, we shouldn’t take this conventional wisdom as gospel. But if we assume that Kennedy’s 24 percent is mostly about people seeking a third option rather than explicitly supporting his worldview, the immediate question is whether someone else should try to fill that space.Someone like, say, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator who spiced up his announcement bowing out of a re-election bid with some talk about “traveling the country” for a movement to “mobilize the middle.”There is already a potential vehicle for a Manchin candidacy in the No Labels movement, along with an effort to draft Manchin and Mitt Romney to run together, with Romney at the top of the ticket.But the ideal ticket would probably lead with Manchin. For an independent run, his branding as a moderate with strong ideological differences with the left seems stronger than Romney’s branding as a conservative with strong moral differences with Trump.When elites pine for a third-party candidate, they usually imagine someone like Michael Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative and social liberal. But the sweet spot for a third-party candidate has always been slightly left of center on economics and moderate to conservative on cultural issues — and that describes Manchin better than it does most American politicians. (It arguably described Biden once but not as he’s evolved in the past decade.)The West Virginian could run, authentically, as an unwoke supporter of universal health care, fiscal restraint and a middle ground on guns and abortion. That’s a better basis for a run than Bloombergism or Kennedy’s courtship of the fringes, with a chance of claiming votes from Never Trumpers and the center left.But is it worth the effort? Stipulate that Kennedy will remain in the race and hold on to some share of the vote that might otherwise be available to a third-party moderate. Then the question becomes whether both Trump and Biden could fall below their 35 and 33 percent levels in the Times/Siena poll, giving Manchin a plurality of the popular vote and a chance at an Electoral College win (because merely deadlocking the Electoral College would just send the race to the House, where — pending the results in 2024 — Trump would probably prevail).In a polarized landscape, that kind of mutual G.O.P. and Democratic collapse seems unlikely. But if you were drawing up a scenario for it to happen, it might resemble the one we’re facing — in which one candidate seems manifestly too old for the job and the other might be tried and convicted before the general election. Such a landscape seems as if it should summon forth a responsible alternative. Confronting the American people with a Trump-Biden-Kennedy choice would be a remarkable dereliction by our political elites.But comes the response from anxious liberals: Isn’t an even greater dereliction for a Democrat — however ornery and moderate — to embark on a run that could help re-elevate Trump to the White House?Let’s allow that it might be, but then let’s also allow that, if current polling holds, it’s not running an alternative to Biden that seems most likely to put Trump back in the presidency.That Trump-friendly polling may change. But it’s entirely possible to begin an independent candidacy and then suspend it (just ask Perot) if the situation looks entirely unpropitious. Which is what I’d advise Manchin to consider, if the donors and infrastructure are there: a patriotic attempt, to be abandoned if it’s going nowhere, but to be seen through if enough of the country desires a different choice.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Will Joe Manchin Run for President? He Keeps Fueling 2024 Rumors.

      by

      The West Virginia senator, who announced Thursday that he would not seek re-election, has stoked chatter about a third-party run. But his allies have been tight-lipped about his plans.Almost since he arrived in Washington, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia has complained about the partisan nature of the Capitol and insisted that Americans aren’t as politically divided as the people they send to Congress.With his announcement on Thursday that he will not seek re-election next year, Mr. Manchin again floated the possibility that he thinks the solution to America’s polarized politics lies in the mirror.“What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together,” Mr. Manchin said in his retirement video.He added, “I know our country isn’t as divided as Washington wants us to believe. We share common values of family, freedom, democracy, dignity and a belief that together we can overcome any challenge. We need to take back America and not let this divisive hatred further pull us apart.”What Mr. Manchin actually plans to do remains a mystery. His closest aides and advisers insist they don’t know. A conservative Democrat who has served as one of his party’s key votes in the Senate, he has long kept his own counsel on his biggest decisions and made up his mind at the last minute.Mr. Manchin has flirted this year with No Labels, a group that has made noise about running a centrist candidate for the White House. No Labels officials said Thursday that Mr. Manchin’s announcement had taken them by surprise, though they commended him “for stepping up to lead a long-overdue national conversation about solving America’s biggest challenges.”“Regarding our No Labels Unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” the group said in a statement.Some allies of Mr. Manchin are skeptical that he will run for president. For one, it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run a credible independent or third-party campaign, and Mr. Manchin has never been a formidable fund-raiser on his own.Fellow Senate Democrats and their super PAC subsidized much of his 2018 re-election effort and were poised to do so again next year had he chosen to run. He did hold a fund-raising event for his political action committee last weekend at the Greenbrier, the West Virginia resort owned by Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican who is running for the state’s Senate seat.But the odds of him winning the presidency would be extremely long, especially at this relatively late date.“I wouldn’t say that he can’t or won’t run, but I know he hasn’t run for anything that he doesn’t want to win, ever,” said Phil Smith, a longtime lobbyist and official at the United Mine Workers of America and an ally of Mr. Manchin’s. “If you look at independent candidates for president, even well-known ones, those who started this late never got more than 2 to 3 percent of the vote.”Then there’s the question of Mr. Manchin’s age. He is 76, and would be running in a race with heightened attention and concern about the ages of President Biden, 80, and the likely Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, 77.Mr. Manchin, a former West Virginia University quarterback, remains in good physical condition for a septuagenarian. In May, he completed a three-mile race in Washington in just over 40 minutes.One thing Mr. Manchin has always enjoyed since he won a special election to the Senate in 2010, when he was West Virginia’s governor, is the attention that comes with being a critical vote when Democrats control the chamber.That has often afforded him a platform that has made him popular among cable television bookers and centrist donors, while drawing the ire of the Democratic Party’s progressive activists. He said this summer that he was thinking “seriously” about leaving the Democratic Party.“If he sees that Biden continues to be the Democratic nominee and Trump the Republican nominee, I think he truly sees a huge slice of the American electorate, both Republican and Democratic, fed up with both of their parties’ nominees,” said former Representative Nick Rahall, a fellow West Virginia Democrat who has known Mr. Manchin for decades.For months this year, Mr. Manchin has cozied up to No Labels, which has so far secured ballot access in 12 states in its attempt to offer an alternative to Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. The group’s president, Nancy Jacobson, has told potential donors that the group intends to select a Republican to lead its ticket, a decision that would exclude Mr. Manchin if No Labels maintains that position.One candidate openly teasing a No Labels run, Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, released a foreign policy video on Tuesday that looked and sounded like a campaign advertisement, denouncing the isolationism in his party and declaring himself “a Reagan guy.”Mr. Hogan appeared at a Bloomberg event last month and said that when he spoke with No Labels officials and donors, “most of them are now assuming it should be a Republican at the top of the ticket.”No Labels has methodically moved forward on its possible presidential campaign, unveiling a manifesto — a platform of sorts — in July and holding its own centrist events. They have featured a rotating cast of characters including Mr. Manchin, Mr. Hogan and Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and moderate Republican.The group plans to raise $70 million before a convention in Dallas scheduled for April. But No Labels officials say they will decide whether to announce that campaign before then, possibly after Super Tuesday on March 5, when the Republican presidential primary contest may be all but over.The decision could come earlier, with the field of presidential candidates outside the major parties continuing to expand.On Thursday, Jill Stein, whose presence on the ballot in 2016 may have helped secure the White House for Mr. Trump, joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the iconoclastic vaccine skeptic, and Cornel West, the left-wing academic, as challengers to the Republican and Democratic nominees. Ms. Stein will seek to represent the Green Party, as she did in 2016.But No Labels’s drive to get a slot on the ballot in all 50 states appears to have stalled at 12. Thirty-four states allow a group like No Labels to claim a place-holder slot without a candidate, but 16 others and the District of Columbia require a ticket.“They’re not going to run a 50-state campaign,” said Mr. Smith, the lobbyist and union official. “They’re just not.”There will be no shortage of unsolicited advice for Mr. Manchin from Democrats when it comes to his plans.Matt Bennett, the co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, who is organizing efforts to stop Third Way and dissuade Mr. Manchin from joining their ticket, said he was “not worried” about Mr. Manchin running as an independent candidate.Rahna Epting, the executive director of the progressive group MoveOn, said Thursday that Mr. Manchin should “reject any overtures from No Labels’s dangerous ploy.” More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Jill Stein Announces Third-Party Bid for President

      by

      Ms. Stein will seek the Green Party nomination, a spokesman said. Her last two campaigns with the party were unsuccessful.Jill Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012 and 2016, will run again in 2024, she announced on Thursday — adding yet another name to the field even as the two major parties appear almost certain to nominate the same two candidates who ran in 2020.“Democrats have betrayed their promises for working people, youth and the climate again and again, while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place,” she said in a video announcing her candidacy, and accused both parties of being “a danger to our democracy.”A spokesman for Ms. Stein’s campaign, LeBeau Kpadenou, confirmed that she intended to again seek the Green Party’s nomination.That institutional backing would spare her some of the challenges in gaining ballot access that will be faced by two prominent independent candidates in the race: the progressive activist and professor Cornel West and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who left the Democratic primary last month.The group of third-party candidates could significantly complicate what looks likely to be a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Some of Mr. Biden’s allies, worried that third-party candidates could siphon support from him in swing states and make a Trump victory more likely, have been working aggressively to undermine those campaigns.In 2016, Ms. Stein drew some 1.4 million votes, and some Democrats blamed her for pulling support from Hillary Clinton in critical states. Her 2012 bid, on the other hand, drew only about 470,000 votes and not much attention because ultimately the race between President Barack Obama and the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was not particularly close.Like Mr. West, Ms. Stein will be running to Mr. Biden’s left. In her announcement video, she called for an “economic bill of rights” that would include a guaranteed right to employment, health care, housing, food and education. The video interspersed images of demonstrations for action on climate change, abortion rights, transgender rights and more as she talked.She wrote in an accompanying post on X: “The political insiders always smear outsiders like us & try to shame voters who want better choices. So forget the politicians & pundits who tell you to ignore your struggle and keep voting for those who caused it.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      RFK Jr. Reveals How Voters Are Dreading a Trump-Biden Rematch

      by

      Frustration with the two men likely to be the major parties’ nominees has led voters to entertain the idea of other options, New York Times/Siena College polls found.A looming rematch next year between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump has left voters deeply dissatisfied with their options, longing for alternatives and curious about independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to new polls of six battleground states conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters in these states, one-fifth of voters don’t like either of them, and enthusiasm about the coming election is down sharply compared with a poll conducted before the 2020 contest.That frustration and malaise have prompted voters to entertain the idea of other options. When asked about the likeliest 2024 matchup, Mr. Biden versus Mr. Trump, only 2 percent of those polled said they would support another candidate. But when Mr. Kennedy’s name was included as an option, nearly a quarter said they would choose him.That number almost surely inflates the support of Mr. Kennedy, the political scion and vaccine skeptic, because two-thirds of those who said they would back him had said earlier that they would definitely or probably vote for one of the two front-runners.The polling results include registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The findings suggest that Mr. Kennedy is less a fixed political figure in the minds of voters than he is a vessel to register unhappiness about the choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.A Fifth of Voters in Battleground States Dislike Both Leading CandidatesRespondents’ opinions of President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump More