Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a former tech executive, said on Thursday that he would not mount a third-party bid for the White House if he doesn’t win his party’s nomination, arguing it would “increase the odds” of President Trump winning a second term in office.
“My job is to help get Donald Trump out of office, and I would do nothing to increase the odds of him sticking around,” Yang told “CBS This Morning” in an interview. “And I think a third-party candidacy would do just that.”
{mosads}Yang entered the Democratic presidential contest last year as a virtual unknown in politics. He faces steep odds of winning the party’s nomination — his poll numbers are consistently in the low single digits and he ended the second quarter of 2019 among the candidates with the least cash on hand.
More recently, however, he has outperformed several of his better-known — and more politically experienced — rivals, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who have dropped out of the presidential race in recent weeks.
Yang has also won the right to appear in the third Democratic presidential debate on Sept. 10. Unlike the first two debates, which featured 20 candidates each, the September debate will include only 10 candidates, a result of tougher qualifying measures.
Yang isn’t the only candidate to rule out a possible third-party campaign for the White House. Another long-shot presidential hopeful, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), said last week that a third-party bid was out of the question, even if she doesn’t win the Democratic nomination.
“I’ve ruled that out,” Gabbard said in an interview with CNN. “I’m going to continue to focus on moving our campaign forward, continuing this grassroots campaign, continuing to deliver our message to the American people.”