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SALT LAKE CITY — Running for president is not something former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. would recommend for anyone.
He said as much during a town hall event in Manchester, New Hampshire, when he was asked if he would consider running as vice president on a bipartisan ticket with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., at the top. The event was hosted by No Labels, a third-party political organization that is making waves amid speculation that Manchin, a moderate Democrat, could run with the group's backing in 2024.
Joe Lieberman, co-chairman of No Labels, said the group will stay out of the 2024 election if polling shows a third-party candidate could play a spoiler by helping elect a Republican or Democrat.
And while Huntsman, the governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009, said he's not considering a run right now, he said he supports giving Americans options on the presidential ballot, noting that a majority of voters are turned off by the prospect of a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
Manchin said he hasn't decided to run or not, adding that he "gets in races to win."
"I think people are putting the cart ahead of the horse," he said. "We're here to make sure that the American people have an option."
Huntsman has been a part of No Labels for more than a decade and served as one of the first co-chairmen of the group.
According to its website, the group has spent the past year surveying tens of thousands of Americans and gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures to explore the possibility of fronting a pair of candidates next year.
"No Labels is working to ensure Americans have the choice to vote for a presidential ticket that features strong, effective and honest leaders who will commit to working closely with both parties to find commonsense solutions to America's biggest problems," the site says.
Huntsman is seen as a moderate Republican, who has been willing at times to call out the former president. After video emerged in 2016 of Trump bragging about grabbing women by their genitals, he urged Trump to step down as the Republican nominee, but later said he would vote for him.
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2020, he praised Trump for his policy toward China; then-Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox narrowly defeated Huntsman in the Republican primary before winning election as governor. Huntsman later criticized Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
When asked how it would work to have a split-ticket government with a Republican and Democrat in the White House, Huntsman quipped: "It would work a hell of a lot better than it works today."
As a "practitioner of crossing the aisle," he said he wants to help facilitate more cooperation in Washington, adding that America's adversaries abroad relish the divisiveness currently dominating politics.
Huntsman — who served as ambassador to China under former President Barack Obama and then as ambassador to Russia under Trump — was asked how those nations view partisanship in the U.S.
"They love it," he said. "When we are together on the big issues of the day, we shine and radiate and we scare the hell out of China, Russia and everybody else. When we're divided, it's just the opposite."
He says he has heard a lot of complaints from Republicans and Democrats that No Labels could disrupt the election and help elect their opponent, which he likened to the authoritarian regimes that deny their citizens a real choice in elections.
"When I start hearing people here saying we shouldn't expand (the presidential field), I say, 'I've heard that before, but not in this country. Here we do it differently,'" he said. "If we end up in 2024 with the same set of nominees that we did in 2020, I mean, is that ... the definition of insanity or what?"
