Sen. Bill Cassidy said he will not be on No Labels’ presidential ticket, removing himself from the shrinking list of elected officials who opened the door to the group.
“I am not being considered now by No Labels,” he told NOTUS Monday night in the Capitol. He said he has “talked to No Labels about the presidential ticket, in general,” but added, “It was never going to be me in particular.”
The senator said he was “of course” still interested in following the organization’s plans.
Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump in the impeachment trial after Jan. 6 and called on Trump to end his campaign last year after the former president was criminally indicted. At the time, Cassidy still said he would vote for a Republican in November. But in an interview on “Meet the Press” in September, he suggested that No Labels would be an option.
“If they came and spoke to me, I would certainly speak to them back,” he said when host Chuck Todd asked about the possibility.
No Labels did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
No Labels delegates voted in a virtual meeting last week to “continue our 2024 project and to move immediately to identify candidates to serve on the Unity presidential ticket,” the organization said in a statement from convention chair Mike Rawlings. However, their ability to find a candidate to lead that ticket has been uncertain for months, with time getting tighter by the day.
Charlie Black, a longtime Republican lobbyist and member of the No Labels board, told NOTUS last month that the group was “in the stage of having more serious conversations with a number of people.” But even by that point, the more high-profile public options were already dwindling.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who had been part of the group’s leadership, opted to run for Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin teased the possibility of running for president but decided not to do so. Nikki Haley publicly shot down the idea she’d join No Labels: “I know that they have sent smoke signals, but I’m a Republican,” she told reporters soon before ending her campaign for the GOP nomination.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, one of Haley’s most prominent backers, has now said he’ll support Trump. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie isn’t firmly out of contention but could face an uphill legal battle for the ballot due to so-called “sore loser” laws.
No Labels has also considered former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, The Wall Street Journal reported, though he does not have the sort of national recognition that would help to supercharge a late campaign.
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The group said it would announce its process for selecting a candidate later this week.
“Now that No Labels’ delegates have given the go-ahead for us to accelerate our candidate search for a Unity ticket, voters will read plenty of speculation about who would be on it,” No Labels’ chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, said in a statement on Friday. “But No Labels has not yet chosen a ticket, and any names floating around are being put out there by someone else.”
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS. Alex Roarty, a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this story.