Politics & Government
No Labels: Solid platform; needs to field candidates
Brookfield resident Manning supports open primaries, ranked-choice balloting, congressional term limits
By Scott Benjamin
NEW MILFORD – Ralph Manning says No Labels has a five-star platform that checks the most vital government policy boxes.
Lowering the federal debt and personal debt; less expensive health care costs; responsible immigration reform; climate change; the secure advancement of technology.
Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
He praises No Labels for helping establish the congressional Problem Solvers Caucus, which tries to build bipartisan solutions.
Yet, he said that No Labels is not reaching its full potential. It didn’t nominate a ticket for the White House and it is not making endorsements in congressional races across the country.
Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Patch.com sent an e-mail message to the Communications Department of No Labels and apparently did not receive a reply.
Manning, 59. who has lived in Brookfield since 1998, considered seeking the endorsement of the Independent Party this year in the Fifth Congressional District. He said that opted not to take that step after considering that he hadn’t done the required preliminary legwork to run against Jahana Hayes (D-Wolcott), the incumbent who is seeking to become the first representative to win a fourth term in the Fifth District since John Monagan of Waterbury was defeated in 1972. She is being challenged by Republican former state Sen. George Logan of Meriden, who also carried the GOP banner in 2022, losing by about 2,000 votes.
In his 2022 campaign, Logan also was endorsed by the Independent Party.
Sportscaster Bob Costas has said in recent months that with incumbent President Joe Biden running for re-election it is as though the Democrats expect to win the Super Bowl with a quarterback with an ailing arm. He added that the Republicans are primed to run former President Donald Trump, whose job application would be promptly rejected by any human resources department.
No Labels, which was established in 2010, generated headlines on its goal of running a candidate for the White House. There was speculation that U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) would take the plunge. But recently the organization said it would not field a ticket in the November 5 election.
“It is kind of a statement across the board,” said Manning, who worked for many years in pharmaceutical manufacturing and has been a handy man since 2015. He has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Connecticut.
Manning added, “It is just not a presidential candidate. It is just the whole aspect of having a viable third party.”
The Wall Street Journal recently posted a column by Karl Rove, the architect of Republican George W. Bush's two White House victories, with a sub-headline that read, "Third Parties never win, but on occasion they've been known to determine the loser."
Rove wrote, "The ones who matter [in 2024] are Independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, the Green Party's Jill Stein, and a yet-to-be-nominated Libertarian Party candidate. None are close to leading any poll, nationally or in a single state."
He added, "No third-party candidate has ever won the presidency. The only one to run second was former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. The last third=party candidate to carry a state was George Wallace in 1968, who won five in the Deep South."
Months ago, New York Times columnist Gail Collins stated, "in the real world, the most No Labels could do is take votes away from Biden" with a presidential challenge.
In an interview with Patch.com, Manning said, "It is a very common argument" that third-party candidates cannot win but can unfairly determine election results.
"There is some validity to that argument," he said. "It is a tough one. But I'm not against supporting third-party candidates to run if that is what they want to do."
On another topic, Manning endorsed open primaries in which unaffiliated and minor-party registrants could participate. He said it would produce better candidates because they would be forced to broaden their appeal.
Nick Troiano, the executive director of United America, wrote in his recent book,“The Primary Solution,” that “Congress has become an unproductive and unaccountable mess. Polls show that only 20 percent of Americans think it’s doing a good job—yet 90 percent of incumbents are reelected. This shocking discrepancy is a natural outcome of our system of party primaries and their polarizing incentives”
Manning also endorsed ranked-choice voting in which voters indicate in order their preference of the candidates on the ballot. He said it forces candidates to appeal to broader coalitions.
He supports term limits of 12 years in the U.S. House and 18 years in the U.S. Senate.
“It would be better to have them and reduce the seniority in Congress “even though some really good people doing a really good job” would be forced out.
Manning said there are many qualified potential candidates willing to succeed the incumbents.
On a separate subject, Manning said that to address a federal debt that now exceeds $34 trillion will require “an honesty with the American people that our candidates have found reluctant to do.”
“Make some choices that are against what a lot of the American public have been seduced into,” he added.
He criticized Biden’s college student loan forgiveness program, which Hayes has supported.
“[It is wrong to give] just blanket forgiveness to a huge group of people,” commented Manning. “There is not much criteria other than it was a lot of votes” that could be generated on election day.
“Why didn’t they do car loans?” he said. “Why didn’t they do mortgages?”
Hayes campaign spokeswoman Duby McDowell indicated via e-mail that Hayes would decline comment regarding Manning’s criticisms of the college student loan forgiveness program.
On another topic, Manning said Americans are not saving enough of their personal income.
Wall Street Journal columnist Andy Kessler recently reported that “credit-card debt is a record $1.3 trillion, but note the Philadelphia Fed reported that late last year the percentages of credit-card accounts that were, 30, 60 and 90 days delinquent were at their highest levels since the bank started collecting these data in 2012.”
Manning remarked that the average home is larger than what it was 50 years ago yet the average family size is less than it was 50 years ago.
If you want to start a new business, a storage center is considered a sound investment.
Manning commented, “We have so much stuff today that we can’t even store it in our home.”
Resources:
Interview with Ralph Manning, Patch.com , on Saturday, April 27, 2024.
Phone interview with Ralph Manning, Patch.com, on Saturday, May 18, 2024.
E-mail message from Duby McDowell, on Thursday, May 16, 2024.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-rfk-jr-swing-the-election-to-biden-307b113e
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Primary-Solution/Nick-Troiano/9781668028254
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/himes-running-ninth-term
