July 28 (UPI) -- Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and a number of other Republican and independent political leaders have partnered to create a new political party they say they hope will attract a majority of Americans.
Yang, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and former Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., announced the new Forward political party in an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Wednesday.
"Political extremism is ripping our nation apart, and the two major parties have failed to remedy the crisis," they wrote.
"That's why we are coming together -- Democrats, Republicans and independents -- to build a new, unifying political party for the majority of Americans who want to move past divisiveness and reject extremism."
The new party, called Forward, is a blend of Yang's Forward Party, which he established last year, the Republican Renew American Movement and Jolly's Serve America Movement.
The group says the United States needs a political party that would take a more moderate approach on issues such as guns, climate change and abortion.
"Sixty-two percent of Americans now want a third party, a record high, because they can see that our leaders aren't getting it done," Yang said in an appearance on CNN's New Day on Thursday.
"And when you ask about the policy goals, the fact is the majority of Americans actually agree on really even divisive issues. The most divisive issues of the day like abortion or firearms -- there's actually a commonsense coalition position on these issues and just about every other issue under the sun."
Yang, a businessman, unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020 and for mayor of New York City in 2021, as a Democrat.
Whitman was the Republican governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001, and served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George W. Bush.
And Jolly represented Florida's 13th Congressional District in Congress from 2014 to 2017, but became a critic of former President Donald Trump's and announced his departure from the Republican Party in 2018.