Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang made a stop in Tampa last week to plug his hopes to start a new, centrist political party, the Forward Party, and brought along a prominent local political figure and Forward’s co-founder, former U.S. Rep. David Jolly of St. Petersburg.
Yang, who ran as a Democrat in 2020 and for New York mayor in 2021, outlined a different path from previous, unsuccessful attempts to establish third parties. Instead of mounting a presidential campaign, the party will focus on recruiting local government officials.
Speaking to a gathering of a few dozen supporters at a South Tampa eatery, Yang introduced the nation’s first Forward Party mayor, former Republican and Libertarian Jordan Marlowe of Newberry.
Yang told the crowd the two major parties aren’t satisfying voters in Florida or nationwide, but maintain a stranglehold on power because of an election system that fosters extremism through partisan primaries, gerrymandering and winner-take-all voting.
“Ninety percent of the congressional districts in the country are drawn to be either blue or red,” he told the crowd. That means candidates are encouraged to “just keep the base happy,” because winning a primary, even with only a plurality, almost guarantees winning the office.
That also discourages compromise for solutions to national problems because of pressure to please extremists, he said, citing Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s initial embrace and then rejection of bipartisan immigration reform.
After losing his St. Petersburg House seat in 2016 to Democrat Charlie Crist, Jolly, a moderate Republican and former protégé of the late U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, began a national campaign to reform the political system, including a speaking tour with former Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, a moderate Democrat.
Because the system encourages polarization, “If nothing is done, the United States will not reach its 300th birthday this century in recognizable form,” Jolly and Yang wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed column, along with former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate Republican.
Yang couldn’t name any Tampa Bay area officials planning to switch to Forward. But one attendee, Brian Bertges of Auburndale, a former Democrat and director of education-related non-profits, said he hopes to run for the Polk-East Hillsborough District 15 Congressional seat now held by Scott Franklin.