Jill Stein Announces Third-Party Bid for President
Jill Stein, who ran unsuccessfully for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012 and 2016, will run again in 2024, she announced on Thursday — adding yet another name to the field even as the two major parties appear almost certain to nominate the same two candidates who ran in 2020.
“Democrats have betrayed their promises for working people, youth and the climate again and again, while Republicans don’t even make such promises in the first place,” she said in a video announcing her candidacy, and accused both parties of being “a danger to our democracy.”
A spokesman for Ms. Stein’s campaign, LeBeau Kpadenou, confirmed that she intended to again seek the Green Party’s nomination.
That institutional backing would spare her some of the challenges in gaining ballot access that will be faced by two prominent independent candidates in the race: the progressive activist and professor Cornel West and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who left the Democratic primary last month.
The group of third-party candidates could significantly complicate what looks likely to be a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Some of Mr. Biden’s allies, worried that third-party candidates could siphon support from him in swing states and make a Trump victory more likely, have been working aggressively to undermine those campaigns.
In 2016, Ms. Stein drew some 1.4 million votes, and some Democrats blamed her for pulling support from Hillary Clinton in critical states. Her 2012 bid, on the other hand, drew only about 470,000 votes and not much attention because ultimately the race between President Barack Obama and the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was not particularly close.
Like Mr. West, Ms. Stein will be running to Mr. Biden’s left. In her announcement video, she called for an “economic bill of rights” that would include a guaranteed right to employment, health care, housing, food and education. The video interspersed images of demonstrations for action on climate change, abortion rights, transgender rights and more as she talked.
She wrote in an accompanying post on X: “The political insiders always smear outsiders like us & try to shame voters who want better choices. So forget the politicians & pundits who tell you to ignore your struggle and keep voting for those who caused it.”