Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney in 2021. | Kevin Dietsch, Getty
Reposted from the Maine Beacon
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and Utah senator who announced last week he will not seek a second term, warns that a corporate-backed group chaired by Sen. Susan Collins could help elect former Pres. Donald Trump.
Collins is the co-chair of No Labels, an ostensibly centrist group backed by billionaire investors and corporate executives that is threatening a third-party run in 2024 if either Pres. Joe Biden or Trump are nominated by their parties. The group currently has enrolled enough Maine voters in its party to qualify for the Maine ballot.
Romney said a third-party campaign by No Labels would be a mistake that would potentially divide the Democratic vote, thereby electing Trump.
“I lobby continuously that it would only elect Trump,” the Washington Post reported Romney saying in an interview about his retirement from the Senate. He went on to say that he had spoken “many times” about it to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat who co-chairs the group with Collins.
Romney added that he thought a rematch between Biden and Trump would be very close.
“Today I’d say 50-50,” Romney said. “If I had to bet, I’d say it could go either way. So much can happen between now and then.”
Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and head of the private equity firm Bain Capital, is a self-styled centrist in the Republican Party and his announcement that he is not running again has been taken as a sign of the party’s continuing lurch to the right. At the same time, Collins, who also brands herself as a moderating force in the party against its Trump wing, has not distanced herself from No Label’s potential spoiler campaign.
Collins recently attacked Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who she ran against in 2014, for attempting to crack down on deceptive practices by No Labels. The Portland Press Herald reported on Sunday that 800 Maine voters have disenrolled from the party after claiming they were misled into changing party affiliations.
Bellows’ office sent a cease-and-desist letter to No Labels last spring after receiving complaints that voters thought they were just signing a petition, not enrolling in the No Labels party, which would prevent them from participating in Maine’s 2024 Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.
Collins accused Bellows of trying to keep No Labels off the ballot, saying it “concerns me to have a state official trying to block ballot access.”
As Beacon previously reported, No Labels launched a campaign last spring to establish a presidential ballot line as an “insurance policy” against both Democrats and Republicans should either nominate a candidate it deems “unacceptable.” The group has already won ballot status in several states.
Like Third Way before it, No Labels bills itself as a middle-of-the-road political organization established to advance bipartisan “practical solutions” for the “exhausted majority” of voters fed up with gridlock and party labels. But numerous media reports since its founding in 2010 have illustrated that those “moderate” policy solutions have typically protected corporate interests and the status quo.
Dan Neumann studied journalism at Colorado State University before beginning his career as a community newspaper reporter in Denver. He reported on the Global North’s interventions in Africa, including documentaries on climate change, international asylum policy and U.S. militarization on the continent before returning to his home state of Illinois to teach community journalism on Chicago’s West Side. He now lives in Portland. Dan can be reached at dan(at)mainebeacon.com.
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