Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “ Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”
Is this the year the first independent candidate can make a serious run for president since Ross Perot rattled Republicans and Democrats in the 1990s? Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they would consider a third-party candidate for president, according to a recent Harris Poll.
This year voters may have a complicated ballot with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and a possible No Labels ticket jockeying for position. Could Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) be part of the rumored No Labels bipartisan ticket, or make a run on his own?
“Voters may be surprised at how many choices they actually have,” Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia, told NBC News. “It’s going to make polls even harder to figure out. It’s an added haze over the whole battlefield.”
There have been three serious independent candidacies in U.S. history. Each of them displayed a unique set of skills. Teddy Roosevelt brought unmatched charisma to the race. Little appreciated was the sophisticated organization of George Wallace, whose campaign was the first to figure out how to tap into direct mail as a fundraising tool. And Ross Perot had a tireless army of grassroots volunteers.
But in the end, they all fell short. One Hundred and ten years later, Roosevelt still holds the record for third-party candidate success, having won a mere six states. Wallace managed to capture five in 1968. Perot did not win a single state in either 1992 or 1996.
Frankly the major challenge for all of this year’s rumored candidates is navigating the onerous rules put in place by Republicans and Democrats to keep others off the ballot and freeze them out of the debates.
To get perspective, I interviewed Perot’s and Ralph Nader’s campaign managers for my podcast, “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.” The United States, they argued, does not tolerate antitrust behavior in the economic system but, sadly, it does in the political world.
We explored the appeal of independent candidates as well as the gauntlet of real-world challenges. I also explained how a campaign rally for one of them cost me my date for the prom.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
