John Morgan discusses his plans to create a new political party in Florida with Dave Elias, political reporter for Gulf Coast News on Feb. 28. (Image: Gulf Coast News)
March 1, 2025 by David Silverberg
John Morgan, the personal injury lawyer of Florida’s incessant and ubiquitous television advertisements, has announced that he is forming a new political party.
As of this writing there are not a lot of details. Morgan announced the new party in a series of X postings.
Here is the sequence, which began at 4:35 pm on Wednesday, Feb. 26. They provide as much detail as Morgan has chosen to make public to date. (Punctuation as posted.)
I am forming a new political party for those of us stuck in the middle.
Our two party system is broken due to Gerrymandering and divisive issues… both sides.
No labels is not an option. Everyone wants a team or tribe.
Ron Myers is my lawyer drafting the paperwork. Stay tuned. #ForThePeople
I need 4 people to file my paperwork. Phil Levine is in... What about you Rod Smith and John McKay? This is ecumenical…
This party is not for “me” necessarily… it’s for “us”
Both parties have things I like. But what I don’t like is that everything is a bloodsport. It’s all or nothing. Compromise is a dirty word and civility has been abandoned.
The last time America was together was right after 9/11. And I liked that feel. Just like the greatest generation in WW2.
People… we are all on the same fucking team. I didn’t vote for Trump but I’m pulling like hell for Trump. I didn’t vote for Kamala either btw. It’s time for a third choice. If the choice is only vanilla or chocolate… you never get to eat strawberry.
Life is like a box of chocolates.
What I have learned with my constitutional amendments and others... is that when an issue is not associated with a party most of us agree on most things.
- Marijuana
- Minimum Wage
- Felons rights
- Fair districts But special interests own the politicians in DC and throughout America.
We need to focus not on me… but US!!
Most laws passed today benefit insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other monopolies.
How about some laws for the people?
People told me my constitutional amendments had no chance and that I was a dreamer. Dream it... Do it… #ForThePeople
The next Governor of Florida should do a few things first...
Expunge or clear every criminal record for possession of pot.
Legalize recreational marijuana immediately. I take a gummy every night and enjoy a few puffs every now and then.
Allow people to home grow pot. A no brainer.
And allow the hemp industry to grow and prosper.
Those would be day one and it’s what Florida wants.
Aside from whatever hallucinations might be induced by those puffs and gummies, how realistic is a third party in Florida? Might Morgan succeed in establishing one—and even becoming governor?
An unpromising history
Most people don’t realize it but there are far more than just two political parties in the United States. As of this January there were 55 distinct national-level political parties and 238 state-level parties, according to Ballotpedia.
Only the Republican and Democratic parties are qualified in all 50 states. The Libertarian Party is qualified in 38 states, the Green Party in 23 states and the Constitution Party in 12 states.
In Florida, according to the Department of State, which oversees elections, in addition to the Democratic and Republican parties, there are 14 additional qualified parties:
Boricua Party (BPP)
Ecology Party of Florida (ECO)
Florida Forward Party (FFP)
Green Party of Florida (GRE)
Reform Party (RFM)
The No Labels Party of Florida disbanded last November and the People's Party had its qualification revoked last October.
For the most part third parties have revolved around individuals.
The largest and most successful was then-former President Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party, which won 27.4 percent of the vote in the 1912 presidential election—eclipsing incumbent President William Howard Taft’s Republicans, who won 23.2 percent.
The logo of Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive, “Bull Moose” Party. (Art: Wikipedia)
That campaign only succeeded in making Democrat Woodrow Wilson president and the party collapsed when Roosevelt declined to run in 1916 and tried to hand the baton to a successor.
In more recent times third party presidential bids were made in 1980 by John Anderson, a Republican congressman from Illinois who ran against President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and entrepreneur Ross Perot who ran as an independent in 1992 and qualified in all states. He ran again in 1996.
In state campaigns, former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura succeeded in winning the governorship of Minnesota in 1998 as the Reform Party candidate. However, he left that party after a year and joined the Independence Party of Minnesota.
Florida has had a third party governor before.
In 1916, after losing the Democratic Party nomination under suspicious circumstances, Sidney Catts ran as the Prohibition Party candidate and won with 47.7 percent of the vote. (The Prohibition Party still exists and claims to be the oldest one in the United States.)
(Parenthetically, Catts won by pounding two themes: 1) complaining that the nomination had been stolen from him by the Democratic political machine and 2) what one historian described as “an almost psychotic anti-Catholicism.” Catts charged that the Pope in Rome was planning to come to Florida to take over the United States with the help of nuns and monks who were stockpiling weapons in convents and monasteries—along with Catholic immigrants who were flooding the country. While there was never any proof of any of his conspiracy theories, they resonated with rural Floridians.)
The Pensacola Journal reports Sidney Catts’ inauguration on Jan. 3, 1917. (Art: Library of Congress)
So no matter what its basis, there is precedent for a third party gubernatorial bid in Florida—and a victory.
Hungering for a third way
For some time there has been a hunger for a third, centrist political alternative in Florida.
In October 2022 the University of South Florida (USF) released a comprehensive public opinion survey in advance of the gubernatorial election at that time.
In the survey of 600 Floridians, 46 percent said they would be supportive of a third party and the same percentage said they would be likely to vote for a centrist, third party candidate.
The survey also showed the disillusionment with the established parties: fewer than half of respondents had a favorable view of either the Democratic or Republican parties, with only 41percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans backing their own parties.
Both Democrats and Republicans felt that their parties reflected their most extreme wings (24 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans).
Have things changed in the last two years? Is Donald Trump’s presidency or Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) governorship driving a longing for a third alternative? Regrettably, there has not been a similar survey of public opinion in Florida since the USF survey, as best this author can determine. While there will likely be many partisan polls in the days to come, the prospects for non-partisan and objective polling and surveying is uncertain at best.
Morgan may touch a chord with his call for non-partisanship. No doubt he will be commissioning his own polls. But given Florida’s woeful lack of neutral, non-partisan public opinion research, the prospects for a third party will rest on hopes and dreams rather than hard data.
Obstacles
There are enormous obstacles to third party political bids, not least of which is qualifying for the ballot in enough jurisdictions to have a reasonable shot at winning.
Beyond just getting on the ballot, third parties face funding restraints, media indifference, legal obstacles, voter unfamiliarity and a system that is simply built around the assumption of two competing parties.—in addition to the vociferous opposition of the existing parties
A real party aiming at a permanent presence seeks to run candidates at all levels for all open offices. As an example of this, last year Florida Democratic Chair Nicole “Nikki” Fried did extensive and strenuous work getting credible Democrats to run for all available seats. It was a major accomplishment when she filled all the slots—even if the vast majority lost. But she understood the importance of the goal.
In every recent third party instance, the party did not last beyond the candidacy of its founder and chief candidate. People like Anderson, Perot and Ventura never built the infrastructure, organization and networks required to take the party from election to election, through both victories and defeats, and build a roster of officeholders, candidates and aspirants that would allow it to endure.
If Morgan is really going to build a third party and not just a lone, independent candidacy, he needs to recruit and qualify candidates for every office up for election in 2026, from mosquito controller to governor.
The good news for him is that there is over a year and a half before the election; the bad news is that that’s actually not a lot of time for an effort of that magnitude.
Analysis: What to watch
Right now Morgan’s declaration is fueling a lot of media excitement.
Morgan himself remains very vague about the future. “I don't know. I'm going to just test the waters,” he told Gulf Coast News’ Politics Reporter Dave Elias in an interview on Feb. 28.
He also made the point that leadership of the new party “…doesn’t have to be me” and at 68 years old going on 69, “I would consider it if all the stars lined up.”
This is salutary humility because he really has to decide between a run for governor and starting a new party. Either one is a serious endeavor and will take all his energy, attention and focus.
He could do both and that’s been the historic pattern of third party candidates. But the historic pattern is also that when attempting both, neither is done well.
Morgan certainly has the managerial, political and financial chops to make either endeavor credible: he’s built the largest injury law firm in the country, with offices in all 50 states. He’s succeeded in lobbying through two Florida constitutional amendments. He has an estimated personal and family wealth of $1.5 billion according to Forbes magazine (and $453 million in personal wealth in 2024, according to ImpactWealth.org). He could draw on talent from all over the country.
Whatever he does, if he’s going to be active he has to decide what he’s doing and get going now. As of this writing it is 612 days until Election Day, Nov. 3, 2026.
That may sound like a lot of time but when it comes to starting a real, permanent political party it’s barely the blink of an eye.
Then again, in politics, a single day can be an eternity.
Commentary: A modest proposal…
A potential party logo. (Art: Wikimedia Commons)
John Morgan says he doesn’t know what his new party name will be. He’s thinking of the “Capitalist Party.” If he chooses to go with his law firm’s slogan, it would likely be the “For the People Party.”
Here’s a thought: how about the RINO Party?
Right now RINO is an insult among Republicans, standing for “Republican In Name Only.” It’s usually used against anyone who isn’t a Trump true believer.
Owning political insults is a time honored tradition. Take the political names “Tory” and “Whig.”
A “Tory” was originally an insulting Irish name for “outlaw” (from the Middle Irish word “tóraidhe”) that British politicians hurled at their opponents in the 17th century. Over time those called tories came to own the epithet and informally adopted it as their nickname. During the American Revolution it was what revolutionaries called loyalists.
Similarly a “Whig” was the contemptuous British name for Scottish cattle drovers. It was applied to fanatical Protestants, “Whiggamores,” when they raided Edinburgh in 1648. It was used as an insult and then adopted by a British political faction. In the United States, it became the name of a major political party opposing President Andrew Jackson in the 1830s.
So owning insults with pride has a long history and there isn’t any reason that RINO shouldn’t be used the same way.
Of course, what Morgan calls his party is his business and the party’s but with a RINO (and a rhino) at least they won’t have to look far for a logo and a mascot.
What’s more, RINO doesn’t have to stand for Republican In Name Only. It could also stand for “Really Independent Nasty Opponent.”
And you’d better get out of the way when they’re charging.
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg