civics: “no labels” election litigation
“These operatives had the gall to say they were fighting to protect our democracy. In reality, they undermined it at every turn…”
“… with frivolous lawsuits, character assassination, and outright lies designed to prevent No Labels from exercising our constitutional right to get ballot access. If you are wondering why Americans are losing faith in our democracy and so many of our country’s self-anointed elites, this is Exhibit A.”
Now leaders of No Labels are fighting back in three federal courtrooms with a sprawling legal-discovery effort aimed at exposing the secret machinations they think led to their project’s demise. Leaders of the moderate Democratic group Third Way and of Investing in US, a political operation funded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, are fighting to limit the document production.
But documents already unsealed by the courts reveal remarkable details about private proposals for a wide range of hard-nosed tactics that would go beyond public efforts like ads, op-eds and meetings to discourage the No Labels campaign. The documents include emails exchanged between various Democratic strategists involved with efforts to oppose No Labels.
A separate “Direct Action Campaign” proposal, which was never fully adopted, called for the personal harassment of No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson and her husband, Mark Penn, a former adviser to Bill. and Hillary Clinton.
The proposal to “socially stigmatize” Jacobson and Penn, according to documents revealed in court, included plans to hire clowns “to hangout on their block” in the Georgetown area of D.C., post fliers in the neighborhood attacking the couple, send a “truck carrying musical performers” to wake them up at 6 a.m., and fly banner planes over Harvard University’s graduation attacking Penn, who does a poll for the university as chair of the Harris Poll and CEO of the marketing company Stagwell. Penn did not play a role in the No Labels. presidential bid, according to the group.
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“We can just rig our own poll to make it look as shit as possible…”
“Block signature-gathering…”
“Make [them] seem like they might be totally crazy/right-wing wackos to mid-low-info voters…”
“Hijacking their ballot line and pushing extremist candidates to muddy [their] brand…”
The above quotes are just a few excerpts from incredible documents made public after a long court fight. Details of a plan to “shun,” “stigmatize,” and “destroy” the third party No Labels suggest a Rosetta Stone of corruption, showing groups aligned with the Democratic Party using dirty tricks and elaborate fakery to attack anyone in their electoral path, all while presenting themselves as “pro-democracy” forces.
When filed a year ago on December 4, 2023, No Labels vs. No Labels seemed a picayune trademark dispute. It concerned No Labels, a political alternative founded in 2010 by longtime Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson and backed by since-passed former Senator Joe Lieberman. Armed with $70 million and plans for “nationwide” ballot access, No Labels was whispered about early in the cycle as a potentially serious threat to the Democrats’ election chances, especially in a race with widespread diffidence regarding the two likely nominees, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal article about them from July 2023 was headlined, “A Mysteriously Financed Group That Could Upend a Biden-Trump Rematch.”
Openly talking about “deterring” other candidacies on principle, or stopping a third party from “successfully signature gathering” (as they did in a different memo), is striking given the Democrats’ stance on other voting access issues.
“Once we backed out, it’s like, all right, let’s go kill off Bobby Kennedy,” said No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy. “Some of these same people before were saying, let’s go kill off Dean Phillips.”
