Over the past year, the centrist group No Labels has spearheaded an ambitious $70 million project laying the groundwork for a unity ticket presidential campaign in 2024.
For that effort, its founder and CEO, one of Washington’s most successful fundraisers, Nancy Jacobson, has enlisted the help of a number of major donors and sought support in top political allies. Outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.), who is considering a presidential run, is the group’s co-chair. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently met with the group’s executives and donors in Dallas.
But behind the scenes there is turmoil inside the organization. Interviews with 14 former employees–including five who left in the last few months–and four other people familiar with No Labels reveals a cutthroat culture, one where staffers are routinely fired or pushed out, have little trust in management, and believe the workplace environment can be difficult for minority and female colleagues.
The internal discord threatens to hamper the well-financed plans that the group has for the next election. Former aides say that staff turnover and bad relations with management make executing on projects more difficult. One former employee said she suffered a panic attack under the intense pressure from her superiors. These staffers add that the image No Labels projects of an institution striving to reform the country’s rigidly partisan political system hides what one former aide said is a “toxic” culture.
Many of the people were granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, though some aired their complaints to POLITICO on the record. Among their allegations:
There is lingering discord over the decision to hire and ally with individuals who left prior jobs under allegations they’d sexually harassed women.
Two former staffers said they witnessed one of the organization’s few Black employees being singled out to discuss race issues at a staff meeting.
At least three ex-aides have sought remuneration from the group over the nature of their termination in the last two years.
Two female staffers recalled management telling female employees to dress more conservatively after a colleague was improperly touched by a male member of Congress at a No Labels event.
Staffers are bombarded with emails and demands by Jacobson. They come at all hours of the day, sometimes with odd requests, such as changing the employer listed on their LinkedIn profiles to “America” to throw off a journalist trying to locate them.
“The internal environment of No Labels is a hostile one which is clear by the fact that no one stays there very long,” said Katie Young, who worked as deputy director of field operations at No Labels from 2019 to 2020. Now an operative for the Republican Party, she said she left the group amicably. “You either agree blindly to everything the CEO wants or they get rid of you.”
In the defense of both Jacobson and the organization, No Labels organized several lengthy Zoom calls featuring roughly a dozen senior officials on each. During those calls, they defended Jacobson’s management of No Labels, saying it is driven by mission and not ego. They noted that she is loath to accept public praise and rarely appears at society events in Washington.
They also insisted that staff complaints, including by those seeking remuneration for the nature of their departure from the group, were simply the product of aggrieved ex-workers. They expressed a missionary zeal for the organization and made the case that the taxing workload is justified by the goals.
But the group’s leaders also conceded that their office culture is demanding. Those who bought in thrived, they said. Those who didn’t, faltered.
“There’s a sense of urgency at the organization. There is a sense of tension in the organization because we want to get this stuff done,” said retired Adm. Dennis Blair, a longtime No Labels board member, who called the group’s work in Washington a “David vs. Goliath” story. “This kind of work is not for everybody, and I think some of the people you talked to simply did not adapt to that approach.”
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No Labels was started in 2010 by the Democratic uber-fundraiser Jacobson with an aim to make the country less polarized by supporting legislation that had significant bipartisan backing and by championing lawmakers willing to work across the aisle.
The group has had its share of critics over the years. Political operatives, particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle, have warned that its projects, including the launch of a unity-ticket project, are a waste of funds. They accuse it of valuing the veneer of bipartisanship more than important legislation and of adopting quixotic causes and candidates.
In 2015, No Labels featured Donald Trump at its “problem solver” event in New Hampshire. This past spring, the group posted a tweet calling the Jan. 6 committee “a partisan exercise,” after which it endured a wave of public backlash, put out a clarifying statement, and then went dormant on Twitter for five months.
Donald Trump speaks at the No Labels Problem Solver convention October 12, 2015 in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Amanda Voisard/Getty Images
Others offer that she could be welcoming and personally supportive. In one of the Zoom calls set up by the group, No Labels vice president McKinley Mason Scholtz said Jacobson had been a critical presence for her during and after she had a crisis pregnancy earlier this year.
“Nancy and these women at No Labels went above and beyond to support me when I was at my weakest and at the most trying time of my life,” she said.
Those current staffers also noted that until the end of last year, Jacobson did not draw a salary, illustrating the nature of her commitment to the group. It was only under encouragement, No Labels officials said, that Jacobson started taking a salary this year (they declined to disclose how much Jacobson earned).
But while Jacobson has worked for years without compensation, No Labels has made payments to firms and entities that were owned or partially owned by Stagwell, the company headed by Jacobson’s husband, Penn. That includes Targeted Victory, which received more than $563,000 from 2017 to 2019 for its work as a “revenue processor,” according to the group’s 990 IRS forms, and Harris Telecom LLC, which received $428,100 for “media” in 2021, according to its 990. No Labels said all payments were approved by its eight-person board.
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In at least three occasions over the last two years, former aides at No Labels have sought compensation for the nature of their departure from the group.
One of those cases involved a former outreach manager who has enlisted the services of a lawyer, Reshad Favors, to get No Labels to pay $120,000 for “race discrimination and retaliation” in relation to her termination.
The outreach manager, who was granted anonymity to protect her ability to secure future employment, said she was told by Jacobson that No Labels wanted her to find more people of color to work for the organization. She found the request offensive since she was one of only two Black staff members at the time.
“I understand the necessity of having diverse representation at all tables, but this request was performative – make the only Black staffer we have on this side of the house responsible for our lack of Black engagement,” she said. “What they were asking me to do is be their token.”
No Labels insisted that there was nothing nefarious about the request, since outreach was part of this person’s portfolio. “Her job was to go out and bring more people into the conversation,” Page said. “She was an outreach coordinator. That’s what she did, or was supposed to do.”
Page and other No Labels executives said the outreach manager was a poor performer who decided to speak out as a form of “extortion.” As evidence, they pointed to the letter Favors sent seeking compensation for lost wages, legal fees and the cost of the emotional duress his client said she endured from working with No Labels.
But the letter No Labels sent had a section removed. When asked, the group offered to share the full letter on the condition they got to respond to all the contents in it. Ultimately, Favors supplied the full letter, revealing that No Labels had taken out a page-and-a-half list of complaints the outreach manager had leveled at the organization, such as being chastised by a superior for not meeting metrics “due to her attendance at a family funeral.”
No Labels co-executive director Margaret White called the outreach manager’s allegations “absurd,” saying that No Labels and its employees had no records related to her claims or knowledge about it.
A lawyer for No Labels, Dan Webb of Winston & Strawn LLP, said the group would not confirm the existence of any settlements with those three people. But a day earlier, White had said in an email to POLITICO that the group had paid one claim, which she called “spurious” and said they regretted settling. White said that in the case involving the outreach manager, No Labels would not pay “a dime.”
The outreach manager said she believed her experiences exemplified larger issues with the group’s culture. She recalled a November 2021 meeting with a donor in Chicago that she attended with two colleagues, senior adviser Ryan Clancy and vice president Megan Shannon. During the meeting, the donor told her “I assume you’re a Black” and went on to blame the deterioration of Chicago on “Blacks.”
Both Shannon and Clancy confirmed that they didn’t rebuke the donor. Instead they attempted to redirect the conversation. They said they regretted not speaking up and have stopped working with the donor, whom they did not identify.
“No Labels was not going to protect us,” the former outreach manager said. “It was donors before us.”
Former employees not seeking remuneration said the aftermath of the death of George Floyd also illustrated what they saw as the group’s blind spots on matters of race.
Staff were angered that No Labels released a statement saying the pain caused by the killing “won’t be solved in the streets,” which they interpreted as an attack on Black Lives Matter protesters. During a subsequent staff meeting, Jacobson told employees they could quit their jobs if they didn’t like the organization’s position, according to two former employees who were there.
Clancy said that the statement was mischaracterized at the time, noting that it warned that gathering protesters could fuel the Covid pandemic. He also said that some staffers wanted No Labels to use the Black Lives Matter hashtag on the organization’s social media accounts– a request it rejected since, Clancy said, BLM is “the name of a very specific advocacy organization that was very controversial and advocated for lots of specific ideas that many Americans don’t support.”
But the internal staff frictions extended beyond reaction to the group’s statement. Two former staffers said they were taken aback when one Black employee was singled out at the meeting and asked for her opinion on the Floyd murder. The woman, who has since left the organization, declined to comment.
Benjamin Chavis, president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a former CEO at the NAACP and a No Labels volunteer, said he believed the group has a “commitment to diversity and inclusion and treating all people with decency and respect.”
Darnell Goldson, a Connecticut co-chair of the group since its conception, who had been asked by No Labels to reach out to POLITICO, also said he was a firm believer in the organization. But he implicitly conceded there was work to be done when it came to matters of race.
“No matter how righteous the mission of the organization may be, if it doesn’t show equity in its hiring practices, I cannot support them,” he said in a statement. “I have high hopes that No Labels will meet my expectations when it comes to its staff and leadership.”
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No Labels is far from the only political institution that has struggled with staff turnover and workplace diversity. And the organization doesn’t deny that work there can be a grind.
“This work is hard. On many days, we’re pushing a rock up a hill in a town where cooperation is discouraged and far too many profit from, or perpetuate, pitting Americans against one another,” Jacobson said in her statement.
But No Labels has brought on board employees who have contributed to those workplace tensions.
The hiring of journalist Mark Halperin as a senior communications adviser in April 2021 created turmoil inside the organization. Halperin was accused by multiple women in 2017 of sexual harassment, misconduct or assault — some of which he apologized for and others he denied.
Mark Halperin participates in a panel discussion on May 3, 2017.