No Labels Exposed: Here’s a List of Donors Funding Its Effort To Disrupt the 2024 Race – By David Corn & Russ Choma (Mother Jones) / June 23, 2023
The roster includes corporate execs who have financed Republican and Democratic candidates.
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
No Labels, the political outfit preparing to run a “unity” ticket in 2024 that Democratic strategists and Never-Trump Republican operatives fear will siphon votes from President Joe Biden, is what’s known as a dark-money group. Unlike political parties, political action committees, and House, Senate, and presidential candidates, it is not required to reveal who is funding it. And No Labels, which says it intends to raise $70 million to possibly place a third-party candidate on the presidential ballot next year, refuses to disclose who is financing this project. But Mother Jones has obtained a list of 36 wealthy contributors and corporate high-rollers who last year wrote big checks to support No Labels’ effort to win 2024 ballot lines in states across the nation. This roster includes past and present chief executives of major companies, including Loews Corporation (a vast conglomerate), Fluor (an engineering and construction giant), Abry Partners (a private equity firm), SailPoint (a tech firm), and Fortress Investment Group.
Among the No Labels backers are donors who contributed millions of dollars to Republican causes, such as past GOP presidential candidates and super-PACS connected to Republican congressional leadership, and several who have poured money into the Democratic presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. One donor provided a big chunk of political cash to Donald Trump. Generally, these No Labels supporters, who mostly made contributions of $5,600 to its 2024 project, appear to favor conservative candidates, though many have played both sides of the aisle, financing Republican and Democratic politicians.
Notable within this group is Michael Smith, the billionaire founder of natural gas behemoth Freeport LNG. He has donated more than $5.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super-PAC tied to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Smith also backed Virginia GOP governor Glenn Youngkin and a slew of Republican senators. He has donated—albeit smaller amounts—to several moderate Democrats, such as Montana’s Jon Tester and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin. Meanwhile, Smith’s wife, Iris Smith, another contributor to this No Labels project, has been a major donor to Democratic causes. In 2020, she gave more than $500,000 to Biden’s presidential victory fund—a joint fundraising committee that split the money between Biden’s campaign and other Democratic party groups. In the weeks before she made this donation, she wrote checks to the reelection campaigns for GOP Sens. David Perdue and Thom Tillis. She has also contributed to McConnell and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton.
