Chris Vance says Joe Bidens current dominance of the field suggests that the country might already have its centrist candidate. Heres Biden stumping for former Sen. Claire McCaskill, who lost her seat to a right-wing nutjob in 2018.
Chris Vance says Joe Biden's current dominance of the Democratic field suggests that the country might already have its centrist candidate. Here's Biden stumping for former Sen. Claire McCaskill, who lost her seat to a right-wing nutjob in 2018. SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES

Eighteen months ago former Washington State Republican Party chairman Chris Vance and former Democratic Congressman Brian Baird bet on the success of a centrist political party in Washington, or rather "a political movement that doesn't stand for anything," as the Stranger put it at the time. On Tuesday they lost that bet.

In a tweet, Vance announced the dissolution of the Washington Independents PAC, which was sort of like the Washington state party for Unite America (formerly known as The Centrist Project), a national organization formed in 2013 with the goal of electing centrists. The party pushed "fiscal responsibility," "free trade," "economic opportunity," "social tolerance," and "environmental responsibility."

Over the phone, Vance said polling conducted after Trump's election showed that "more people were becoming Independents," and that he thought Independents weren't winning elections nationwide because they didn't have organized structural and financial support. So he and Baird teamed up with Unite America to help the cause. The organization funded dozens of Independent campaigns in the 2018 election cycle, but they all lost.

"And usually, they lost badly," Vance said. He pointed to Neal Simon, a CEO of an investment company who raised and spent over $2 million for his U.S. Senate bid in Maryland but lost with under 4% of the vote. Republican Tony Campbell raised just over $200,000 and came in second with 30% of the vote.

Vance blamed voters "motivated by negative voting" for the failure of the centrist strategy. "People don't vote for the Republicans, they're voting against the Democrats or vice versa," he said. The last time Pew asked the question about negative voting, it looked like more Republicans engaged in negative voting than Democrats during the 2016 election, but that the general trend since 2008 was up overall.

Now, Vance says United America will focus on supporting changes to the electoral system such as ranked-choice voting, campaign finance reform, and ending gerrymandering. To which Vance says, "Okay, cool. [Washington] has a top-two primary, open ballot access, nonpartisan redistricting, and still we elect nothing but Republicans and Democrats."

Vance still thinks the country needs a centrist party, but the current success of Joe Biden's candidacy has "really taken the wind out of the sails" of that idea. "If the Democrats are going to be a centrist party, then maybe we don't need another one," he said.