Politico | Andrew Yang to launch a third party
- The presidential candidate turned New York City mayoral hopeful is no longer identifying as a Democrat
- It’s not clear what the name of Yang’s third party will be or how he plans to deploy it
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Alex Thompson on politico.com on September 9, 2021.
Former presidential and New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is set to launch a third party next month, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Yang is expected to start the party in conjunction with the October 5 release of his new book, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.
It’s not clear what the name of Yang’s third party will be or how he plans to deploy it in 2022 or 2024. Yang and his team did not respond to requests for comment.
But the book’s publisher, Crown, did give some clues about the type of platform Yang may pursue. It writes that the book is an indictment of America’s “era of institutional failure” and will introduce “us to the various ‘priests of the decline’ of America, including politicians whose incentives have become divorced from the people they supposedly serve.”
The book is blurbed by business-person Mark Cuban (“a vitally important book”) and The New York Times’ Kara Swisher (“Can there be another political party in the US? … In Forward, Yang does not just give us a laundry list of intractable problems, but shows how we can find solutions if we think in new ways and summon the courage to do so.”).
A former business-person, Yang surprised many in the political world with creative, outsider campaigns for both president and mayor. His presidential campaign outlasted and raised more money than those of much more seasoned politicians. But, ultimately, that did not translate to votes as he dropped out shortly after the New Hampshire primary and faded in the polls as the mayoral race came to a close.
He ran predominantly on the idea of a universal basic income, which would see the government give citizens a monthly US$1,000 cheque. It was a quirky policy proposal that did not fit neatly into the ideological prism of either party and won Yang converts among many apolitical figures online and in the media – some of whom dubbed themselves the “Yang Gang”.
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