The Draft: Effort to recruit Manchin for president underway
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CHARLESTON -- U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin is no longer seeking re-election in 2024, choosing instead to spend the next several months taking the temperature of the country for a third-party moderate alternative for president.
But a national group hopes to prod him toward a run.
Manchin, D-W.Va., announced in November he will retire from the Senate at the end of his final year. Instead, Manchin will focus on traveling the country to promote moderate political solutions. Manchin's daughter, former Mylan Pharmaceuticals CEO Heather Bresch, has been forming a political group to help facilitate Manchin's quest.
For months, Manchin has been talked about as a possible presidential candidate. Expressing displeasure with the Democratic Party he has long belonged to, Manchin has talked about switching to independent.
Speaking after a Jan. 3 event at the Culture Center in Charleston welcoming an economic development announcement by electronics manufacturer LG for its NOVA program, Manchin said he is not committed to a presidential campaign as of yet, but he is committed to motivating moderate voters on the center-right and center-left to get more involved in presidential politics.
"I want people to know that basically anything you are upset about, anything you don't like about the political atmosphere we have in our country today, it's not going to be fixed in Washington," Manchin said. "We're trying to basically invigorate people to get involved, take control again, basically, of what you want, who you want to represent you, and how you want represented. That's the bottom line."
Seen as a possible nod toward a third-party presidential run, Manchin attended a Politics and Eggs event Friday. The event is sponsored by the New England Council and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
The event is Manchin's second trip to New Hampshire, attending an event by No Labels, a bipartisan political organization founded in 2010 to promote political moderates in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
An effort also is underway to encourage Manchin to consider a presidential run. Jennifer Franks, a Boston-based political consultant, created the Draft Romney Manchin Committee in November to push Manchin and Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, into running for president on a third-party unity ticket.
Speaking by Zoom Tuesday from Boston, Franks said she founded the group because she wants moderates like herself to have an option beyond the possibility of Democratic President Joe Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump. Biden is seeking re-election to a second term while Trump is the frontrunner in an increasingly shrinking pool of primary challengers.
According to a November poll by Quinnipiac University, 52% of voters would like to see different candidates run for president, including 72% of independents and 58% of Democratic voters. Franks believes this sentiment among likely voters gives her committee an opportunity to woo Manchin and Romney.
"We kind of have a chance here where we can mobilize the middle," Franks said. "And we thought that Romney, with voter I.D. and name recognition, and Joe Manchin, two guys who are very well respected in high regard, and who have come together in a bipartisan way to work together for the American people and their interests...we felt that if there's any opportunity, now is a moment to mobilize that opportunity."
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 2012, also announced last year he is retiring from the Senate. Both Manchin and Romney have a history of working together, including most recently on the Fiscal Stability Act. The bill would create a 16-member commission to study the nation's debt and develop legislation to help stabilize the country's fiscal condition.
"Years of fiscal irresponsibility have resulted in the catastrophic debt we face today, which now exceeds $34 trillion, double what it was just 10 years ago," Manchin and Romney said in a joint press release last week for the Fiscal Stability Act. "The future of our great nation depends upon reining in our debt crisis and a failure to act now will saddle our children and grandchildren with an insurmountable barrier to achieving the American Dream."
The Draft Romney Manchin Committee is raising funds and has collected more than 2,000 signatures from voters who would like to see a Romney/Manchin unity ticket.
"We've seen both parties go so far extreme-right and so far extreme-left," Franks said. "We are not directly affiliated with the No Labels platform, but they certainly, we have seen, have created this opportunity for us possibly to again mobilize the middle and have a very centrist Republican and very centrist Democrat that have a track record of working so well together. Whether they agree or disagree, they sit down and they hear each other and they come up with commonsense solutions for the American people."
Manchin's No Labels event over the summer was a Common Sense Town Hall at Saint Anselm College with Jon Huntsman Jr., a former governor of Utah, Republican presidential candidate and ambassador. No Labels is a bipartisan political organization founded in 2010 to promote political moderates in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Manchin is the Democratic co-chair with Huntsman, the Republican co-chair.
No Labels is working hard on getting ballot access in all 50 states. While the organization is interested in a potential third party presidential ticket, it has also said it will only field such a ticket if there is no chance the 2024 election could be tipped toward Trump.
"Our members said if we really want to change things in Washington, we ought to think about running a ticket or at least think about creating a third line for a presidential ticket and really shake up the country and get our politicians in Washington working together from the White House," said No Labels founding chairman Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000 and a former Democratic-turned-independent Connecticut U.S. Senator, in an interview on WV MetroNews Talkline last week with host Hoppy Kercheval.
"West Virginia's Joe Manchin, if he is interested, would be somebody that I would certainly argue that No Labels should seriously consider because he's been a bipartisan centrist who has always worked across party lines to get things done for the country and for his constituents in West Virginia," Lieberman said.
Manchin declined to say last week what he thought of the Draft Romney Manchin movements, but he said he has been concerned for a long time about the polarization of the country.
"You're not successful in your life or your business life or your personal life if you continue to drive people apart," Manchin said. "And right now we're basically really forcing people to take a side. And I tell people, remember, there's only one side, the American side. You can be a Democrat, you can be Republican, you can be an independent, you can be anything you want, but at the end of the day, you better always be an American first."
Franks said the Draft Romney Manchin Committee has not had direct talks with either senator, though she was hoping to get in front of Manchin at the Politics and Eggs event in New Hampshire. She hopes her efforts and the efforts of No Labels can show Manchin there is a middle lane for a moderate presidential candidate.
"We as people need to step up and do something," Franks said. "I think there's great hope…I think in the coming weeks we really will see that it is going to be a rematch against Biden and Trump, and we're going to have an opportunity when people say that it's too late and all of that. It's never too late. I'm a (New England Patriots) fan and when we're down 28-3, it's never too late. You can win in the fourth quarter."
For more information, go to DraftRomneyManchin.com.
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