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The Independent
09-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
‘It's not something you do by posting on Twitter': Man behind Ross Perot's campaign gives Musk third-party advice
The man behind Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign is offering Elon Musk advice on building a third-party following the announcement Musk is creating what he calls the America Party. Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, ran on Reform Party ticket in 1992, and garnered about 19 percent of the popular vote, helping former President Bill Clinton oust then-President George H.W. Bush. In 1996, Perot received close to 8.5 percent of the vote. His 1992 effort is the most successful independent bid for the presidency in modern history. Perot's Reform Party also elevated former wrestler Jesse Ventura to become the governor of Minnesota for a term between 1999 and 2003. At the time, Ventura was the first Reform Party candidate in the nation to win a statewide office. Russell Verney, a former chair of the Reform Party, advised Perot, and wasn't optimistic about Musk's political future when speaking to Politico. 'It's not something you do by posting on Twitter that you have a political party. It takes a lot more work than that,' he told the outlet. Perot's push for deficit reduction changed the political landscape and fueled Clinton's efforts to achieve a balanced budget. Musk could achieve similar results. 'My basic advice is: Go to rehab and then focus on creating a new political party from a position of seriousness, not of anger, not of retribution, not of retaliation,' said Verney. The former Perot adviser argued Musk isn't actually creating a political party. 'He's creating a political committee that is going to encourage people to run and may make independent expenditures on their behalf,' Verney told Politico. 'A political party essentially has a big structure, and the most important asset of a political body is ballot access — in other words, the right to place the name of its candidate on the general election ballot. Musk doesn't have that.' Verney went on to note that while candidates themselves will need to get ballot access Musk can 'assist' them in doing so. 'Third parties don't have to win to be effective,' said Verney, recounting how Perot explained deficit spending and the national debt to the public. President Clinton balanced the budget for the first time since the Eisenhower administration, he noted. It hasn't been balanced since those two years during the Clinton administration. 'That was the result of the support Perot got,' said Verney. The former Reform Party chair said political candidates only care about elections and, as such, want to 'co-opt' the voters attracted by a position, such as reducing the deficit and the national debt. 'All candidates really stand for is elections. It's not about progress. It's not about making America great. It's just about elections,' he said. Verney said Musk can have a 'big impact' on both the Republicans and the Democrats if his candidates 'start coming up with a coherent message and start showing some support.' You can only petition the Federal Election Commission to become a national party after getting ballot access in enough states. And to get ballot access in many states, you have to get votes, Verney argued. 'The Reform Party did that. The Libertarian Party did that. There are lots of others that have tried and failed,' he said.
New York Times
09-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Elon Musk Consulted Curtis Yarvin, Right-Wing Thinker, on Third Party
As Elon Musk studies up on how to start a third political party, among the people from whom he has sought advice is a somewhat surprising choice of consultant: the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin, who is perhaps best known for advocating monarchism. Mr. Yarvin is one of the most influential thinkers on the so-called tech right, where he has attracted attention for his oft-expressed distaste for traditional American democracy. He would not seem to be a source of the kind of expertise that Mr. Musk needs as he pursues his idea for the America Party — Mr. Yarvin is not an expert on the mechanics of creating third parties or on the strategies and intricacies of running third-party campaigns. Still, Mr. Musk and Mr. Yarvin spoke late last week about the task ahead, according to two people briefed on the conversation who insisted on anonymity to describe it. A representative for Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Yarvin declined to be interviewed. Some of Mr. Yarvin's friends over the years have included technology leaders like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, and Vice President JD Vance has cited his writing. In talking with Mr. Musk, Mr. Yarvin shared some of his political theories, the people briefed on the conversation said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
DeSantis warns Musk against third party
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) warned Monday that Elon Musk's formation of a third party would dampen Republicans' forecast in midterm elections. After weeks of feuding with President Trump over the tax and spending megabill's electric vehicle credit rollbacks and an increase in the national debt, the tech giant announced Saturday he'd launched the 'America Party.' 'The problem is, when you do another party, especially if you're running on some of the issues that he talks about, you know, that would end up — if he funds Senate candidates and House candidates in competitive races, that would likely end up meaning the Democrats would win all the competitive Senate and House races,' DeSantis said during a press conference. The Florida governor lauded Musk for cutting government spending through his work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in earlier remarks but suggested creating a third party goes too far. 'We do have a problem in the Republican Party with these D.C. congressmen. They always run saying there's out-of-control spending, and they're going to spend less, and they never do it,' DeSantis said. 'I think there is a lot a frustration with the gap between the rhetoric in their district, and the performance once they get into D.C. But the way you do that is expose that in a primary and show that there's another way forward,' he added. Trump loyalists including Steve Bannon have slammed Musk for rivaling the GOP. But Musk has argued it's time 'for a new political party that actually cares about the people.' However, one longtime leader of a third party said it won't be easy for Musk to build steam ahead of 2026, when the nascent party is aiming to propel candidates into midterm campaigns. 'Many people have tried to build new political parties. Most have failed,' Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement to The Hill. 'If Musk thinks he can wave a wand and a party appears, he's in for a rude awakening,' he added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Washington Post
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
The perpetual folly of creating a new ‘third' party
Before we assess the eternally unrealized dream of a potent third party in American politics, let's consider the specific, recently emergent dream of one specific man: Elon Musk. Yeah, yeah, he took a poll on his social media platform and his fans said they wanted him to form a third party so he created the 'America Party.' Cool. But … why? The answer he would give you (if I may be so bold as to translate his social media posts) is that moderate Americans lack a voice from either of the existing major parties and also that those parties are too similar. His intent is to win some federal elections so that his party's (meaning his) positions have a voice in the room. But you don't need a political party for that. Lots of wealthy people with agendas have managed to get sympathetic politicians elected. Musk himself was so convinced of his own role in getting Donald Trump elected president that he tried to repeat that success in Wisconsin, much more obviously unsuccessfully. You create a political party to build institutional power, to create a receptacle that pools money and energy on behalf of candidates. And that's the real question for Musk: Who's going to help construct that institution? Former Trump adviser Hogan Gidley wasn't wrong when he said Musk has no natural political base, which I'll discuss more below. But who's going to donate to a political party created by the richest man in the world? Who's going to volunteer? Trump managed to get people to donate to a billionaire, but he did so in large part by taking over an established institution with tens of millions of existing members. We can extend that question by asking who Musk is trying to build power for. Trump did a good job convincing disaffected White people that he was their champion. Musk presents the America Party as the voice of a middle to which he believes he belongs, which in practice means it will be the voice of right-wing people who are centrally worried about the budget deficit and clean energy. He got a taste for power while working in the White House and wants to keep that going, apparently forgetting about the part where he also became wildly unpopular. (And also? Preliminary data from the 2024 American National Election Studies shows that only a third of registered voters thought both climate and the tackling the deficit were very important issues. But nearly two-thirds of them already have a party: the Democratic Party.) But let's step back from Musk to note how silly it is to talk about the creation of a third party, as though there exist two-and-only-two parties at the moment. The reality is that there are dozens of parties, at least 55 of which have ballot access in at least one state. Saying you're going to create a third party at this point is a bit like saying you're going to introduce a fourth car brand. There are about 65 million registered voters who aren't Democrats or Republicans, according to analysis of data from the firm L2. In many states, though, voters don't have to register by party. We can intuit where their political allegiances lie by looking at the ballots they request for party primaries or using other data, but it's often the case that people aren't directly members of political parties at all. Where we do have data on third-party membership generally comes from states where people register with a party, as you would expect. So to what third parties do voters belong? A lot of them are Libertarians. The map of Green Party members looks similar, though with fewer members in the Plains states. One of the third parties with the largest memberships is the American Independent Party, an organization that has thousands of members in California in large part because people accidentally join as they're attempting to register as independents. There are various existing socialist parties, too, which (perhaps unexpectedly) are heavily centered in New Jersey. There is even an Anarchist Party, for those comfortable with cognitive dissonance. The point is that there are existent political parties for pretty much any political palette, including those with a taste for no government at all. What there isn't is need for people in many states to register with those parties. Relatedly, there is also not a lot of institutional power within the parties themselves. Ballot access is part of it. The rules for getting candidates on the ballot intentionally make it hard for nonmajor parties to do so and the major parties (for obvious reasons) have little incentive to revise those rules. This pattern repeats on other dimensions of political power, too: The Democratic and Republican Parties have built enormous institutional power for themselves and aren't in a rush to hand that power to others. So let's look at the last time a nonmajor party gained a foothold in national politics. That came with the H. Ross Perot-led Reform Party, which was formed after Perot leveraged his fortune to get on the presidential ballot in 1992 earning tens of millions of votes around the country — but zero electoral votes, thanks again to the major parties' systemic advantages. There are still thousands of Reform Party members around the U.S., mostly in states with large populations. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of them were of voting age when the Reform Party was formed. It was formed, it got Perot on the ballot again in 1996 (far less successfully) and in 2000, it flirted with nominating a guy named Donald Trump as its candidate. (The party opted instead for Pat Buchanan, whose reactionary politics Trump excoriated in 2000 and exceeded in 2024.) By 2004, the party was essentially dead. In summary: A political party born of discontent with the major parties and founded by a successful, rich politician managed to eke out only a few years of relevance before collapsing. It is true that the major parties are less popular now than they were then. Analysis of ANES data shows how views of the parties have plunged — though that's a function mostly of plunging popularity among members of the other major party. But this works against Musk's plan: If Republicans view Democrats extremely negatively, how many of them are going to rush to support a third party that might increase the odds a Democrat gets elected? Independents, meanwhile, view both parties skeptically. They tend to vote with one party or the other despite that dislike, because they dislike the other party more. In other words, they, too, are often voting strategically. This, however, doesn't mean they're ripe for the plucking, as Musk seems to think. A few years ago, a colleague and I looked at the extent to which partisans held ideologically consistent views. On six policy issues, only pluralities of Democrats and Republicans were consistently supportive of their party's position across the board. There was a surprising amount of overlap in the positions held by the partisans. Yet they are still partisans, often because the importance of those issues differs to them as they cast a ballot. Consider ANES data looking at how important deficit reduction is to those who are and are not members of the two major parties. Even a majority of Democrats say it's at least very important — but they view other things as more important still. Nearly half of Democrats say both that it's very important to reduce the deficit and that the government should provide many more services. A third of independents and third-party members say the same. The most obvious answer to the question of who Musk's America Party is meant to serve is Elon Musk. Maybe he can convince other people to sign on, get candidates to run and maybe even get them elected. As Perot learned, that's actually the easy part. Building a powerful party takes more than that, and for both ideological and structural reasons has proven very difficult to do. Just ask millionaire Andrew Yang, who founded the Forward Party after his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2020. He is now reportedly offering his advice to Musk, for whatever good that will do either of them. Lenny Bronner contributed to this column.
Washington Post
09-07-2025
- General
- Washington Post
Man scales building to save family from fire in Paris
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