I tried to take down the MAGA Trump GOP as an independent. It didn’t work | Opinion

In the fall of 2017, after 37 years as a Republican staffer, candidate, lawmaker and State Party Chairman, I left the GOP and joined other Never Trumpers in the political wilderness in search of an alternative to our two-party system. I have wandered many paths, tried different options, made lots of predictions that turned out to be wrong, and have written about this journey over, and over, and over and over again.

Sadly, after six years, I have to admit little progress has been made.

For much of my journey, I believed that electing moderate independents was the answer. In 2017, I became very active in Unite America, an organization formed to create a political infrastructure to help independents run for office. During the 2018 election cycle, we recruited and supported strong, credible independent candidates for offices across America. And they all got crushed. Most finished with less than 10% of the vote.

Still, I and others continued to believe that under the right circumstances, an independent could win. So in 2022, I put that theory to the test by running for the State Senate as an independent against a Republican incumbent — with no Democrat on the ballot. At the same time, Never Trump leader Evan McMullin was running for the US Senate in Utah, one-on-one against Republican Mike Lee. Polling in both our races was very encouraging — at first. In the end, we both lost by fairly wide margins.

The independent path is a dead end. No matter what voters tell pollsters early in a race, when November comes, most will retreat to their partisan corner because they know that voting for an independent may help elect the party they hate the most. Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s poll numbers cratered when she left the Democratic party and became an independent. For all the noise the group No Labels is making about fielding an independent presidential ticket next year, their own polling shows them running a distant third, and given the history with independents, their numbers are likely to fall further next fall.

The hard truth is that throughout history, here and around the world, democracy is based on competition between political parties. It’s clear to me now that to make a difference, you must be a party member.

So, the path for my Reaganite, now-moderate, Never Trump tribe is to either fight to restore the GOP to its former center-right path or replace it with a new party. In early 2021, a group of us met to discuss how to do exactly that. The result was the launch of the Renew America Movement. RAM was composed of dozens of prominent current and former Republican leaders ready to fight back against the Trumpist takeover of the GOP. I had high hopes that this was the beginning of a robust new movement.

But less than a year later, the leaders of RAM decided to merge the organization with two others to form the new Forward Party. I joined Forward when my State Senate campaign ended, assuming that at least some of the principles RAM believed in would be part of our platform. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that the leaders of Forward were determined to try and build a party with no ideology or platform. That approach is not working for Forward now, and I do not believe that it will be successful in the future.

Even if I am wrong, it is not what I signed up for or want to be a part of, so I resigned from Forward. Another dead end in the wilderness.

The decision to merge RAM into Forward killed the nascent movement to restore or replace the Republican party. Other than helping to elect Democrats, there is no organized political action among the Never Trump center right today.

In Washington state, our two-party system has given us one-party government. Americans say they want an alternative.

But the sad fact is what I encountered firsthand in the wilderness:

No such alternative is on the horizon, and we’re heading into another tremendously contentious national election.

Chris Vance is a former Republican state legislator, King County Council member and State Party Chairman who left the GOP in 2017.

This story was originally published June 28, 2023 at 5:00 AM.