“We are going to do a final determination that at least at this point we have met all of our standards, and we are not going to be a spoiler and that we are not going to reelect Trump and that we actually have a chance to win,” Lieberman said.
He reiterated that he does not want to participate in a process that makes Trump’s election more likely.
“To me personally, stopping him from being reelected is a goal even greater than restoring bipartisanship to Washington,” said Lieberman, who served as both a Democrat and independent senator.
Mike Rawlings, a former Dallas mayor and CEO of Pizza Hut who is running the No Labels convention process, told the group’s chosen delegates on a call last week that they may have only 48 hours’ notice of the need to nominate a candidate. He said a nomination would be made by early April.
“It is possible in the end we won’t find suitable candidates. We all realize that,” he said.
Lieberman said the group was looking at appointing a conservative or Republican to lead the ticket, in part to make sure that any candidate does not pull more strongly from Biden than Trump. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the group is considering Geoff Duncan, the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, as a possible nominee.
When asked by a Washington Post reporter for a comment, a person close to Duncan, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Duncan was in discussions with No Labels but that no decisions have been made.
Lieberman added that No Labels’s leadership would have the option of pulling down the effort if a No Labels candidate failed to gain traction after a few months.
“We are going to keep an eye on the numbers, both through our data collection and polling and the public numbers,” Lieberman said.
“We want to give the American people the third choice, bipartisan, moderate, that the say they want,” he continued. “But if for some reason after two or three months, they say they don’t want it, we have got to be realistic and say, ‘This is not the year.’”
