Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang made a stop in Tampa last week to cap his hopes of creating a new centrist political party, the Forward Party, and brought along prominent local political figure and Forward co-founder former North Rep. – American David Jolly from Saint Petersburg.
Yang, who is running as a Democrat in 2020 and for mayor of New York in 2021, outlined a different path than previous and 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 restaurant, Yang introduced the nation’s first Progressive Party mayor, former Republican and Libertarian Jordan Marlowe of Newberry.
Yang told the crowd that the two major parties are failing to satisfy voters in Florida and across the country, instead maintaining a grip on power because of an electoral system that encourages extremism through partisan primaries, gerrymandering and winner vote.
“Ninety percent of the congressional districts in the country are drawn to be blue or red,” he told the crowd. That means candidates are encouraged to “keep the base happy,” because winning a primary, even with just a plurality, almost guarantees winning office.
That also discourages compromise on solutions to domestic problems because of pressure to please extremists, he said, citing Florida Republican 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. CW Bill Young, began a national campaign to reform the political system, including a speaking tour with the former MP. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, a moderate Democrat.
Because the system fosters polarization, “If nothing is done, America will not reach its 300th birthday this century in recognizable form,” Jolly and Yang wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion column, along with the ‘former governor of New Jersey Christine. Todd Whitman, moderate Republican.
Yang could not name any Tampa Bay-area officials who plan to switch to Forward. But one of the attendees, Brian Bertges of Auburndale, a former Democrat and director of education-related nonprofits, said he hopes to run for the Polk-East Hillsborough 15th Congressional District seat that now occupied by Scott Franklin.
