Rep. Dean Phillips, who is running a long-shot presidential campaign to unseat President Joe Biden, is receiving assistance from a former presidential candidate who lost to the current commander in chief.
Phillips is among a trio of Democrats making hail mary bids to represent the Democratic Party in the 2024 general election, though they have all faced issues getting on the ballot in certain states, including Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Massachusetts.
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Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2022, and his allies are now assisting Phillips’ cause.
“We are activating our network in Florida to help ensure that voters have a say in the future of the country,” he told ABC News, explaining that the “we” are allies in his network and not an official position of the political party he founded in 2021, “The Forward Party.”
“What’s happening in Florida is important — do we live in a democracy or not? If the Democrats can simply cancel their own primaries they should change their name to something else,” Yang continued.
Phillips, author Marianne Williamson, and progressive media commentator Cenk Uygur have accused the president and Democratic National Committee, without evidence, of being behind the effort to keep them off the ballot. Officials have denied the allegation, while the DNC has been clear in its support for the incumbent, which is customary, long before Biden launched his re-election bid.
When Florida Democrats submitted their list of presidential candidates to the state’s Secretary of State, only Biden was included. Florida law dictates that if there’s only one candidate declared in the primary, then it does not get held at all.
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While Phillips’s campaign has yet to file its own challenge against the state party’s decision, Florida attorney Michael Steinberg filed a lawsuit against the Florida Democratic Party and Secretary of State Cord Byrd earlier this month, arguing the process by which candidates are placed on the presidential ballot is unconstitutional.
The campaigns of the trio of candidates have claimed that the hurdles they’re facing to get onto the ballot are “authoritarian” and “unconstitutional” in response to Florida leaving them off the primary ballot.
