No Labels has caused headaches for President Joe Biden‘s reelection campaign, with the threat of taking key votes away in an expected rematch with former President Donald Trump, but the president’s campaign has a secret weapon to combat the centrist group — former President Bill Clinton.
Clinton, famous for his bipartisanship with Republicans in Congress for a significant portion of his presidency in the 1990s, helped talk Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan out of pursuing a presidential run, according to a report from New York Magazine.
The report claims Clinton met with Hogan in Little Rock, Arkansas, last year before a joint appearance at an event and warned him that running for president with No Labels would only help Trump in his bid to win another term.
The outlet also claims that when Clinton met with Manchin, he “told the senator sharply” that if he ran for the White House with No Labels, he would be putting the country at risk of another Trump presidency.
Hogan and Manchin confirmed months after the reported meetings with Clinton that they would not run for president in November. Hogan is instead running for the Senate to represent Maryland, while Manchin is not running for reelection to his West Virginia Senate seat.
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No Labels has insisted it would not run a candidate to benefit either Trump or Biden and is exploring running a third-party candidate to give voters an option besides the two major party candidates from 2020. The centrist group is expected to decide whether to run a candidate after Super Tuesday.
Trump has led Biden in most of the recent head-to-head polls nationally and in key swing states, but both men remain unpopular with a significant number of voters.