Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is joining arms with dozens of former Democrats and Republicans, some of whom hail from the Bush and Reagan administrations, to form a new third political party to appeal to the millions of US voters who increasingly find themselves frustrated by the gridlocked two-party system.
The Forward Party announced its entry onto the national stage on Wednesday, as was first reported by Reuters, and will be co-chaired by Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Mr Yang, who left the Democratic party last year to register as an independent and form an earlier iteration of the new centrist party.
“It’s time to deliver the new approach to party politics millions of Americans have been waiting for—Forward! Let’s go!” Mr Yang, who also ran an unsuccessful campaign for the mayor of New York City in 2021, wrote on Wednesday in a blog post.
Making up this new third party, which hopes to become a national challenger to the two-party-dominated system by the 2024 presidential election, is the Renew America Movement, created last year by dozens of Republican alumni from the Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush and Trump administrations; the Forward Party, founded by Mr Yang last year when he launched a book with the party’s namesake; and the Serve America Movement, a centrist group of Democrats, Republicans and independents that was founded by former George W Bush staff members and whose executive director is former Republican congressman David Jolly.
“After years of working in parallel to reform our democracy, we are thrilled to announce that we are officially merging with @Fwd_Party & @samforus under the #ForwardParty name! Together, we will move our the nation #FWD,” tweeted the official Renew America Movement on Wednesday, with a message that was near identical to ones tweeted out by the Forward Party and Serve America Movement.
Part of the rollout of the new third party will include major events held in dozens of cities this fall, with an official launch being held in Houston on 24 September and the hopes of a first national convention – with the location yet to be announced – being held next summer.
The group has yet to provide any specific details about what their policies on various issues will be, but has indicated that its centrist outlook will inform its two pillars to “reinvigorate a fair, flourishing economy” and to “give Americans more choices in elections, more confidence in a government that works, and more say in our future.”
“The US badly needs a new political party – one that reflects the moderate, common-sense majority,” leaders Mr Jolly, Ms Todd and Mr Yang wrote in a Washington Post op-ed introducing the group’s entry into Beltway politics.
The party has cited a Gallup poll from February 2021 as a motivating factor for forming the new organisation, which found that 62 per cent of US adults said the two dominant parties “do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.”
This finding was a notable uptick from a previous poll, conducted shortly before the 2020 presidential election, that found that only 57 per cent of Americans sought a third-party entry, reflecting a trend that has elevated the notion in recent years. In 2013 and 2015, 60 per cent of Americans supported an additional party outside of the GOP and Dems, and in 2017, that had grown to 61 per cent.
When discussing the violent insurrection on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the leaders wrote in The Washington Post about how this moment reflected a grim reality for the US political system going forward.
“How do you remedy such a crisis?” they wrote. “In a system torn apart by two increasingly divided extremes, you must reintroduce choice and competition.”
The last time that a third-party candidate was elected to the highest office in the nation was back in 1860, when the then-newly formed Republican Party (created just six years earlier) launched Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, effectively displacing the then-dominant Whigs party.
Still, the new party remains optimistic that they’ll be able to secure party registration and ballot access in 30 states by the end of 2023 and by late 2024, be active in all 50 states.
Finances, typically a burden for entry onto the main political stage for smaller third parties, will also not be an issue, co-chair Mr Yang told Reuters in an interview.
“We are starting in a very strong financial position. Financial support will not be a problem,” he said, confirming that the party will start with a budget of about $5m and that it has donors lined up alongside hundreds of thousands of grassroots members from the three merged groups.
Online, critics of the new party, from both sides of the aisle, were quick to take swipes at the group for being a ploy from their opposition to steal votes ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“Ok good. Libs and RINOs form a new party to take votes away from the squishes called Forward. Might as well call it #Uniparty,” tweeted Republican Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers.
“Former Republican and Democrats want to form a new party called Forward. The only thing I can see this doing. Is taking votes away from Democrats and helping the Republicans. We don’t need a 4th party,” tweeted one user.
While Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant and never-Trumper, said during an appearance on MSNBC that he views the Forward Party as a distraction from much larger problems facing American politics.
“My greatest fear about this is that it’s going to detract and distract people from what is really the greatest crisis we have- which is stopping an autocratic movement,” said Mr Stevens.
For their part, the newly formed party, which Mr Yang has claimed will be the third largest party by resources, outpacing the Green and Libertarian parties, isn’t backing down at the accusations that they’ll be “spoilers” for the two behemoths.
“Some call third parties ‘spoilers’. But the system is already spoiled,” they wrote. “The two major parties have shut out competition, and America is suffering as a result.”
