Democrats are taking third-party threats seriously this time

Democrats are taking third-party threats seriously this time

The presidential race is official, with President Biden and former president Donald Trump clinching their parties’ nominations Tuesday.

But this year, Democrats are clear: They do not want a rerun of 2016, when third–party candidates got millions of votes, leading many political observers to say even today that those votes helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. 

This time, Democrats are prepared. The Biden campaign and the political apparatus hoping to defeat Trump are taking third-party candidates seriously — a stark difference from the Democratic Party in 2016.

Before the third–party candidates get on a significant number of state ballots (and before some candidates are even set), Democrats have started to organize:

• The Democratic National Committee has a dedicated staff, including veteran strategist Lis Smith, working to defeat third-party candidates. They have filed complaints about alleged violations of campaign law by the super PAC American Values 2024, which is backing independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to the Federal Election Commission.
• In a memo provided exclusively to The Early, center-left think tank Third Way, which opposes a Trump presidency, debunked moderate group No Labels’ claim that its prospective “unity ticket” will drop out if it appears the bid would benefit Trump, calling the group’s “off-ramp” a “fantasy.”
• Third Way has filed complaints to secretaries of state about the super PAC backing Kennedy.
• American Bridge, the Democratic opposition research group, is tracking third-party candidates closely. 
• “Allies of President Biden have formed a super PAC called Clear Choice, aimed stopping any third-party or independent candidates from gaining traction before the November election,” our colleague Michael Scherer reports this morning.

“We’re expecting a close election in 2024, and we are going to be prepared for every contingency,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said. “This includes making sure independent and third-party candidates play by the rules.”

The case against a third party

The third-party candidates this cycle could be numerous and their impact significant.

Kennedy is set to announce his running mate in the coming days, and he’s spoken with football player Aaron Rogers and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, our colleague Michael reports.

Meanwhile, No Labels will appoint a panel today to discuss its presidential ticket, Michael reports.

While the group has had trouble finding a nominee after most high-profile politicians have declined, relatively low-profile Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan is reportedly in talks to be the candidate.

Princeton University professor Cornel West could run, and so could repeat Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general. 

In an election where voters are dreading a rematch from 2020, voters might be more inclined to at least be third-party curious.

“History suggests disaffected voters gravitate back toward the main two party candidates, but we’ve never had two party candidates that are this unpopular where their negatives are higher than the positives for both of them,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “It would not be surprising to see a larger proportion of voters pick somebody other than the two major candidates.”

While it’s unclear where third-party voters will come from at this point, Democrats are worried that they might be potential Biden voters.

“I think you’ll see a much more concerted effort about who these people are and why they should be avoided,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way. 

In 2016, the third-party spoiler moniker was real. 

Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the three closest swing states that determined the election, by just 67,000 votes total. Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Stein received more than half a million votes among those three states. 

In 2020, Biden won narrowly when there were no major third-party options. That year, the third-party candidates didn’t garner a significant amount of the vote.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans worry that third parties will take potential Biden voters. Those voters could be critical, as Biden pulled disaffected Trump voters for his narrow victory in 2020.

“In 2020, if you were a Republican who refused to support Trump, you didn’t have another choice,” said Marc Short, top adviser to former vice president Mike Pence. 

Kennedy’s national polling is sitting in the mid-teens, extraordinarily high for a third-party candidate. He entered the Democratic primary but switched to run as an independent in the general election. He has also toyed with running on the Libertarian party ticket.

Political observers say he’s polling high now because voters know the Kennedy name but know little about him, including his anti-vaccine platform and embrace of conspiracy theories.

On the surface, it might seem like Kennedy would take votes from Trump, but Democrats fret that he’ll eventually also hurt Biden. One top donor to Kennedy’s super PAC, Timothy Mellon, who has given at least $20 million per FEC filings, is also a major Trump donor.

As the New York Times wrote after holding a focus group with disaffected Trump voters, “the Kennedy factor in this election should be taken pretty seriously in the swing states where he’s likely to make the ballot this fall.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon will hold a hearing today on two motions to dismiss the classified documents case against Trump. Here’s what you need to know: 

The Presidential Records Act: One of the dismissal motions centers on the Presidential Records Act, which says presidential and vice-presidential records — including classified documents — “belong to the public and are to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidency,” our colleague Perry Stein reports.

• Trump’s argument: “Trump’s lawyers argued in a 17-page filing last month that as president, he had ‘virtually unreviewable’ authority to designate presidential records as personal ones. They said the National Archives has authority over only presidential records — not personal ones — and therefore had no right to demand that he return the materials. Trump’s legal team also argues that the responsibility to recover presidential documents falls to the Archives, as a civil matter, and that the records agency should not have referred the matter to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution.”

The Espionage Act: In the second dismissal motion, Trump’s lawyers argue that the section of the Espionage Act he is accused of violating — which prohibits the willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it — “is unconstitutionally vague as applied to President Trump,” Perry reports. 

• Trump’s argument: “Trump is essentially saying that as president, he was the person who had ultimate authority to determine what is classified. He therefore cannot be considered someone who is unauthorized to view these materials, according to his dismissal motion. Trump’s lawyers also appear to argue that the term ‘national defense information’ is broad and that Congress has provided no guidance to conclusively determine what it includes.”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution team has rejected Trump’s PRA and Espionage Act arguments as “plain wrong.”

Race is an ever present source of tension in Trump Georgia case

Our colleague Amy Gardner examines the ways in which race has affected Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani T. Willis’s (D) election interference case against Trump and his allies, as well as the effort to disqualify her from the case over her romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade and to dismiss all charges. 

“It’s hard to argue that race hasn’t infused the controversy,” Amy writes. “Race has repeatedly popped up in testimony, court filings and even email exchanges between Willis’s team and the defense lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants.”

“Within weeks after Willis took office in January 2021, she came under harsh criticism for her prosecution decisions — and the threats against her began,” Amy writes. “At first, they were mostly tied to her prosecution of rapper Young Thug, who is on trial for alleged gang activity in the Atlanta area. Then Willis launched an investigation of Trump’s attempts to try to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, leading to felony charges in August against Trump and 18 of his allies.”

“She has had her home address published and has had false 911 calls made to her home. Her voice mail inbox has become a steady stream of hate-filled messages, with some callers wishing for her death, telling her to watch her back or threatening to target her family. Some used racist slurs such as calling her a ‘monkey’ and the n-word. Willis moved out of her South Fulton home, stopped going to the grocery store and now travels with a security detail of at least four officers, who often vary her route to the courthouse, she has said.”

• “One Alabama man, Arthur Ray Hanson II, faces federal felony charges stemming from threatening voice mails he left for Willis as well as Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat. Hanson referred to Willis as a ‘big fat black a–.’ One lawyer for Hanson, Timothy Mays of Duluth, Ga., suggested that Hanson did not address Willis in the first person and therefore did not commit a crime — but the transcript of his voice mail suggests otherwise.”
• “Any time you’re alone, be looking over your shoulder, because I’ve been informed that there’s people that are going to want to f— you up,” he told Willis on the recording. “Not just you but your whole entire f—ing piece of s— family. So all of you sorry a– coons that are coming after Trump because you’ve got this power — watch your back.”

“Then in early January, Trump co-defendant Mike Roman filed a motion accusing Willis of hiring Wade in November 2021 while in a romance with him, and then profiting from the hire by allowing him to take her on ‘lavish’ international trips,” Amy writes. “In the weeks that followed, the racist messages to Willis — some of them anonymous and difficult to trace — ramped up significantly in volume and tone, according to a sampling of them obtained by The Washington Post.”

• “Willis received an email with her picture in it and the words, ‘You god damn N—–.’ Another email shows her face imposed on a gallows. Another note, this one handwritten, says, ‘What? Some crackers have been b——’ about you putting that black buck of yours on the payroll? What’s their business? Don’t they now that’s the way n—— function?’ The note ends with the phrase, ‘SLAVERY FOREVER.’”

“Now, the probing of Willis’s private life has unleashed a new round of bigoted attacks perpetuating ugly sexual stereotypes about Black men and women,” Amy writes.

• “A few weeks after Roman’s filing, a woman showed up at a Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting with a prop — a foot-long hot dog labeled ‘Nathan’s.’ ‘Nothing comes between me and my Nathan’s hot dog,’ the woman said during the public comments portion of the meeting. ‘Come on up in here now, my dark and lovely lunch.’”

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