| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
America marks 250 years and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment. | |
| From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments. | ||
| Only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss efforts to expand the U.S.'s two-party political system is Lindsay Drath. | ||
| She is the CEO of Forward Party. | ||
| Lindsay, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me, Tammy. | |
| We'll start with just an overview of your organization. | ||
| Tell us about Forward Party, your mission, and founding principles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wonderful. | |
| We are an ideologically inclusive new political party in the United States of America. | ||
| We are working to create a more representative and responsive government by introducing competition to reduce toxic polarization and extremism. | ||
| We are a values-based organization, and I think we'll probably spend some time this morning and we'll have some time with the callers to talk about what it means for a political party to scale as a values-based organization, as opposed to one that is ideologically specific on one issue. | ||
| We also are building from the ground up. | ||
| This is not a party of any one individual. | ||
| We are not starting at the top of the ticket. | ||
| We're starting at the bottom, which is really, really important to who Forward is. | ||
| We are about to celebrate our third birthday on the 27th of this month. | ||
| That birthday actually marks the merger of three organizations that all shared a similar vision, a similar why, which is that functional and representative government. | ||
| Their hows were a little bit different, the three organizations that merged. | ||
| Andrew Yang had launched the Forward Party in the summer of 2021. | ||
| There was another organization called the Serve America Movement that was another political party. | ||
| Also, their vision for change to achieve that representative and functional government was disrupting the duopoly, what we call this two-party duopoly, right? | ||
| And the Serve America movement had run candidates in New York and in Connecticut for governor, had achieved ballot access in those states. | ||
| And we'll talk about the barriers for entry this morning and why the two parties have made it so difficult. | ||
| Sam learned that firsthand. | ||
| Those two organizations merged with a group called the Renew America Movement that was a group of Republicans that didn't see a home in the MAGA direction of the Republican Party. | ||
| Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey, came to Ford from that organization. | ||
| So I think the idea that those three organizations merged is very central to our ethos at Forward and what we're looking to do across the country, which is bringing people together, finding opportunities for coalition, which if we look at historical precedent of the creation of third parties, has been a sticky wicket. | ||
| We're working in our DNA to create those coalitions and opportunities for alignment. | ||
| And you mentioned a couple governors in there, but when it comes to the types of races, the Forward Party is focused on at what level is that? | ||
| Is it presidential, congressional, state, and local? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we very specifically did not get involved in the presidential race at all in 2024. | |
| As I said, we're right now in our third year, and so our focus has been building this from the ground up, which is difficult. | ||
| It's really hard, Tammy. | ||
| But, you know, we believe strongly that if a third party is going to prevail and introduce this competition, it does need to be done from the ground up. | ||
| And so while a political party is our vehicle and our tool for change, it is the movement of the people that is going to be transformative. | ||
| So Ford is a movement that is being deployed through the vehicle of a political party because that's how candidates run in America. | ||
| So I think one of the most powerful opportunities we have for party building, coalition building, and deployment of a movement is coalescing around local elections and local candidates. | ||
| So what does it mean to build locally through city council races, school board races, mayoral races? | ||
| And then those individuals in that movement will then level up to higher positions for office. | ||
| Now, we are also looking at congressional races because this country needs it desperately right now. | ||
| We have a completely gridlocked Congress, and that gridlock has led to, I think, an over ceding too much power to the executive branch because of that gridlock. | ||
| And so we want to have, we want to inspire and incentivize three functioning branches of government. | ||
| And so the Ford Party will be getting involved in U.S. House races and hopefully some Senate races in 2026 as well. | ||
| And now almost three years in, you were talking about some of the issues of starting from the ground up. | ||
| What does your organization currently look like when it comes to staffing infrastructure funding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So oftentimes I will talk to different stakeholders about the fact that people might not think that infrastructure is sexy. | ||
| At the Forward Party, we think infrastructure is very sexy. | ||
| It is all about that opportunity to build from the ground up. | ||
| And so we have about 250,000 members across the country who are active in our movement. | ||
| We have functioning state parties in, and state parties I mean executive committees that have been stood up. | ||
| The same way the GOP and the DNC has state party infrastructure across the country. | ||
| We talk about kind of that AMWA model of building volunteer infrastructure across the country. | ||
| So in 27 states we have functioning executive organizations. | ||
| We have ballot access in five states. | ||
| So that means that in five states around the country you can get on the ballot as a forward party candidate. | ||
| You can register as a forward party candidate. | ||
| So we encourage voters, go out, register as a voter in the Forward Party. | ||
| You can do it in Utah and Colorado and Florida and South Carolina and certain communities in Connecticut. | ||
| Connecticut's very tricky from an election law perspective. | ||
| We have 15 members of the full-time Forward Party staff at our DC headquarters. | ||
| Maintaining a headquarters is actually one of the requirements for going to the FEC for federal party recognition. | ||
| I want to ask you about a Gallup poll that was done last year. | ||
| It was done just about a little over a month before the election. | ||
| It found that 58% of U.S. adults agree that a third major party is needed in the U.S. because the Republicans and Democratic parties, quote, do such a poor job of representing the American people. |