Political parties in our nation seem to be talking past each other and don't agree on much. That increasing polarization has revived calls for a third party that doesn't cater to the extreme right or left. Enter the new Forward Party, which is co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
WUSF's Steve Newborn asked Yang what his party offers that the two major parties don't.
SN: You are the co-chair of America's newest party, the Forward Party. That's quite an optimistic name. What do you think your party offers that the other two major parties don't?
AY: It's not left or right. It's forward. And that's where most Floridians want to go. That's where most Americans want to go. And the question is, why are we not going there? The answer is, we've got this locked up, dysfunctional political system that rewards something other than giving people what they want.
There have been third parties formed throughout the history of this country, think Ross Perot, John Anderson, going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party, but they never really gained much traction. What makes you think you're going to be different?
"We're building at the grassroots local level, we're talking school board, city council, county executive, these roles that make a big difference in your life that are not national flash in the pan campaigns."Andrew Yang
I love this question so much. And I've got a name for you, Jordan Marlowe. Now, you might not have heard of Jordan, but he's the mayor of Newberry, Florida, who just joined the Forward Party. We're building at the grassroots local level, we're talking school board, city council, county executive, these roles that make a big difference in your life that are not national flash in the pan campaigns. That's the way the Forward Party's going to succeed in Florida and throughout the country.
So you sound like you're kind of repeating something that's been tried and true for the right wing of the Republican Party for the latest example of that - targeting school boards, mayoralties - low-level and kind of building up from there. So you think this is a grassroots from the ground effort that's going to filter upwards?
Yes, because again, it's what most people actually want in their communities. I'm going to tell a story that might be familiar to some of you. So a school board election was not in Florida, there were four candidates. One far left, two in the middle one on the far right, the Dems endorsed the far left, the Republicans endorsed the far right, they won, and now they can't get along or get anything done. And if most people understood who the candidates were, they probably would have taken the two people in the middle. Those are the people that the forward party endorses. So that's the kind of change that we can generate, where we actually live in work, and the DC politicos and the journalists won't care because they don't care about these local races, but you know, who should care? We care.
"So that's the kind of change that we can generate, where we actually live in work, and the DC politicos and the journalists won't care because they don't care about these local races, but you know, who should care? We care. "Andrew Yang
Many of these third parties have been formed not to win elections, but to change the behavior of the two major parties. Is that part of what you're looking to do right now?
One of the things that we want to do that most Americans want to see achieved is to improve the incentives for our elected officials. Right now, they don't need to make most of us happy, they need to keep the base off their back, they need to placate the most extreme and ideological voters. If you had better processes and better incentives, then you'd have better results. And we'd feel less crazy.
One of the big roadblocks to the parties like the one that you've formed here is in the primaries, here in Florida, for example, you can't vote if you're an independent. So you have the Republicans dominated by the right wing on their side and the Democrats in the primaries dominated by the left wing. How do you break that logjam? How do you get in there?
You look at a state like Nevada, they just voted last November to get rid of the party primaries. 53% of Nevadans were for it, even though both parties came out against it. In Florida, there was a similar ballot initiative that got 57, 58% of the vote. And it needed 60% to win, unfortunately, because they've rigged the system against the average voter again. I mean, if you listen to that, 57%. Shouldn't that be enough? But they said, you know what, let's make it harder, because they know that's what we want. We want to turn off the extremes and we want our legislators to actually have to listen to us for change.
You said you're building this from the ground up, targeting school boards, local elections, that sort of thing. Are you going to be like the other two parties and have electoral offices in each of the counties, for instance, or are you going to have a permanent local presence at all?
"We have very exciting executive leadership in Florida, and we're backing officials and races that we think we can make a difference in."Andrew Yang
We have very exciting executive leadership in Florida, and we're backing officials and races that we think we can make a difference in. But this is going to be dependent upon the energy in each individual county. We think we can get to every county in Florida, though, based upon what we've seen.
This is a long term deal, right? You're not in for this election, you don't have any candidates in this upcoming presidential election. This is the beginning of something that you think is going to have legs and will last into the future.
Well, I want to ask people listening to this right now, where do you think it's going to come from? Like, where are the solutions, the results, the outcomes that we want for ourselves, our families, our communities is going to come from? Is it going to come from this current political system that does not care about us? Or is it going to come from a grassroots movement where we actually rise up and take control of our own futures? The forward party thinks that's the latter, than if you'd like to join us in moving Florida not left or right. But forward.
What have you been hearing from the voters?
Oh, yeah, you sit down with the average Floridian and they're a Democrat. They're super sad. If they're an independent, they're generally very sad. And a lot of moderate Republicans are even very sad. So you have a system that's making most people sad and angry and frustrated. And you have to ask what the heck is gone wrong. That's what we're seeing in Florida and around the country. And that's why the Forward Party is the fastest growing political movement in the U.S.
