SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Support for a third political party continues to grow across the country. According to a new Gallup poll, 62% of Americans believe a new political party should be formed.
Assemblymember Chard Mayes, I-Yucca Valley, said he understands this hunger for another political party option as the only Independent lawmaker in the California legislature.
Mayes left the Republican party almost two years ago and was recently part of a Zoom call with dozens of other former members of the GOP who want to start their own party.
“I didn’t leave the Republican party, the Republican party left me. I know there are Democrats that feel that same way, and that’s why the numbers of Independents are skyrocketing in the country,” Mayes said.
The Assemblymember was one of more than 100 former Republicans who discussed founding a new party for people who no longer identify as part of the GOP.
“Half of the group believes the Republican party is irredeemable and it’s time to start something new, the other half said the Republican party can still be fixed and they should form a faction within the Republican party,” he explained. “I’m more of the former rather than the latter.”
The Independent legislator, who represents parts of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, said the Republican party has become about one person rather than a group of people.
“This new party is not going to be about one person, it’s going to be about all of us who have the same shared values, those folks who are in the center-right, those folks in the center and those folks in the center-left,” Mayes said. “We’ve got to be able to come together to bring common sense back again.”
However, Charles Henry, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, said it’s unlikely for a new political party to be successful in the United States.
“It’s very, very difficult to form a third party because the two major parties have stacked the rules,” Henry noted.
He points out it’s much easier to be on the ticket of either the Democratic or Republican party.
“The easier route would be to take over one of the two major parties,” Henry explained. “We haven’t really had the emergence of a new party since the Republican party replaced the Whig party in the lead up to the Civil War.”
Henry said he’s paying close attention to the future of the GOP after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6.
“The Republican party is not only losing some constituents, but they’re losing big money donors — corporate donors,” he added.
So far, more than 14,000 Southern California Republicans have left the party since January 6, and more than 33,000 have left statewide.
Assemblymember Mayes believes these numbers will only continue to grow in the future.
“The truth is, all over the state and all over this country people have had it with the two-party system, they’ve had it with the duopoly and they’re looking for something else,” Mayes said.
Mayes said he’ll have more conversations about creating a new third party in the weeks to come and hopes to see it officially formed in the near future.