No Labels Party now labeled as Arizona Independent Party

PHOENIX — The political party that had been known as No Labels in Arizona now has a label.

The party is now known as the Arizona Independent Party (AIP), according to former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, who is the party’s chairman.

AIP has the third-most registered voters (42,277) in Arizona, trailing only the Democratic (1,269,886) and Republican (1,603,141) parties, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.

Johnson hopes that number, and the number of candidates the party has on ballots, will soon rise.

“Our goal is to open up the party to independents and unaffiliated, not only voters, but candidates,” he told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Chris & Joe Show on Tuesday.

Why did the No Labels party become the Arizona Independent Party?

Johnson said the name change came after the national No Labels party and the local chapter in Arizona decided to part ways following last year’s general election.

No Labels was founded in 2009 as a social welfare organization, but soon evolved. In 2024, it attempted to get a presidential candidate on the ballot, but was not able to, according to Johnson.

“They just don’t have the ability to run a local organization,” Johnson said. “So, I had a conversation with them and they handed the party over to myself and a group of people who had run the open primary system.”

Johnson said it became clear soon after that a new name was necessary for the party, so they polled members on several options and AIP received overwhelming approval.

The name change was recently approved by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, and will reportedly go into effect on Dec. 1.

The AIP already has three candidates who have filed statements of interest to run for office in 2026. They are:

• Dr. Stephen Neal Jr., Superintendent of Public Instruction
• Adbi Mohamud, State Representative for District 11
• Michael Zepeda, State Treasurer.

The former mayor said he is talking to candidates statewide about joining the party, and that it will now be easier for them to get on the ballot.

“If you decided to run for statewide office six months ago, if you wanted to run as a Republican, you needed 6,000 signatures. If you wanted to run as a Democrat, it was about 6,000 signatures. If you wanted to run as an independent, it was about 45,000 signatures.”

Johnson said that was done on purpose to encourage candidates to join one of the two major parties. However, now that the Arizona Independent Party has been made official, it will be easier for third-party candidates to get on the ballot.

“So what this does … is it allows those voters, independents and unaffiliated, to be able to run and have to get an equivalent amount of signatures to what the Democrat or Republican party does,” Johnson said. “Under the old system, it was impossible for an independent to get on the ballot. But now with this party, independents actually have a chance.”

What is the platform of the Arizona Independent Party?

Johnson said the party has 14 key beliefs. While he did not list them, he used a metaphor to describe the party’s platform.

“It’s like your house is burning down, right? You’re inside your house, it’s on fire and out on the street are these two people whose job it is to save you. And instead of them coming in and saving you, they’re standing out on the curb arguing about who lit the match,” Johnson said.

The chairman said this leads to a system where blame becomes a central topic in elections, which causes most voters in primary elections to be driven to vote by grievances, which is why he wants to see primaries opened.

“When I ran for city council the first time many years ago … you had to go knock on Republican doors, Democratic doors and independent doors,” Johnson said. “What happens in a partisan primary, especially with gerrymandering, is that these people go out and they run … but they talk to less than 8% of the public who will actually vote in their partisan primary.”

Johnson hopes that a move to open primaries would make independent and unaffiliated voters more of a focus for all candidates.

“Today, we’re in a world where you have to choose between MAGA and woke. And the answer is that’s just not where the public is. The public is much broader than that,” Johnson said.

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