Tucker Carlson Is Starting a Third Party. Those Who’ve Tried Say: Good Luck!

Tucker Carlson, the conservative commentator and former Fox News host who recently split with the Republican Party, said he wants to help create a third party.

In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published Wednesday, Carlson said the United States’ two main parties, Republicans and Democrats, are “in lockstep solidarity with each other.”

“That’s not a democracy,” Carlson said. “That’s a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken, and there’s going to be a third party, and I’m going to do everything I can to bring that about.”

Carlson said he left the GOP because of the administration’s fervent support of Israel and the trajectory of the Iran war. But he was vague about ideas for a third party’s platform, though he said he would not be a candidate himself.

Building a third party is not a new idea — many have attempted to do it, and third-party candidates do successfully run on local and national ballots. It’s important work, proponents told NOTUS, but gaining power outside of the entrenched two-party system in the United States requires years of backbreaking and often thankless work.

After Elon Musk split with President Donald Trump, he also pledged to start a political party. Soon after, he pumped the breaks on the effort. In 2021, Andrew Yang, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, cofounded the Forward Party. Despite several efforts, candidates affiliated with Yang and the organization have failed to break through.

Forward Party CEO Lindsey Williams Drath said the organization struggled in its early days to navigate the byzantine campaign finance system in the United States, which is often governed at the state level.

“What people don’t understand about creating a third party is really, you’re creating effectively 51 parties,” she said. “You’re launching the national infrastructure to support something, but then you’re navigating campaign finance and election law across 50 states, and that complicated web of systems is built by intention by the two parties to raise the barrier for entry higher than any new political party is able to achieve.”

“It’s not that this is impossible work, it’s just really, really hard, and it requires an incredible amount of grit and determination to navigate,” she said.

Williams Drath provided the Arizona No Labels Party as an example. Just this year, the independent party was challenged by the state’s Republican and Democratic parties when it wanted to change its name. Ultimately, a judge ruled No Labels could not change its name.

“Those parties have actually sent lawyers out from Washington, D.C., to litigate and push that party off of the ballot and push off legitimate candidates,” Williams Drath said.

Libertarian Party Chair Evan McMahon said in a statement to NOTUS that his party can “sympathize with Mr. Carlson’s frustration with the Republican party.”

“What Mr. Carlson will quickly learn is that the Republicans and Democrats write the rules and control the elections,” McMahon said. “Forming a new political party will be an uphill battle filled with heartbreak and debt. We wish him the best of luck.”

Williams Drath noted that it is extremely difficult for candidates running outside the two-party system to get on a ballot, raise money and have their voices heard.

“If you’re a Republican, you can use Win Red. If you’re a Democrat, you can use Act Blue. Without the infrastructure of a political party, it’s very difficult to compete as a candidate,” she said.

“Right now there’s a hunger for third parties or independent politics, but I doubt that that is going to be filled by a party created by Tucker Carlson,” said Ravi Mangla, spokesperson for the left-leaning Working Families Party, founded in 1988. He said that creating a third party is easier said than done, describing Carlson as someone who lacks the necessary experience in organizing voters.

“The Working Families Party has been built up over three decades of slow and difficult work,” Mangla said. “It’s very easy for a charismatic figure to say that they want to create a party, but what it actually takes is building a broad base of support among members and voters, and that is not easy work.”

Williams Drath was noncommittal when asked if Forward Party would consider working with Carlson in the future. But she had one piece of advice in particular for Carlson: Start from the ground up — not at the top of the ticket.

“It is very hard to capture that lightning in a bottle from the top of the ticket,” she said. “You need to build something that is lasting and durable from the bottom up. It is hard and it is long, and you need lots of lawyers.”