Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., continued to tease a third-party presidential run at a town hall in New Hampshire on Monday night, saying he would win if he decided to launch his campaign.

“I’ve never been in any race I’ve ever spoiled. I’ve been in races to win. If I get in the race, I’m gonna win,” he said early in the night, quickly adding: “I haven’t made a decision.”

The centrist Democrat was taking part in a No Labels forum at St. Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H. alongside former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a Republican. No Labels is a group that has spent the last decade promoting bipartisanship in Washington. Ahead of 2024, they’re working to establish a third party, bipartisan unity ticket to break up a potential rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Manchin has grown increasingly close with the group as they court him to run, but he has yet to commit to running for either president or reelection in the Senate in 2024.

“I think people are getting ahead of it. Putting the cart ahead of the horse. We're here to make sure that the American people have an option and the option is can you move the political parties off their respective sides. They've gone too far right and too far left,” Manchin said when asked if would consider Huntsman as a running mate by the Scripps News journalist moderating the event. If No Labels backs a ticket, they want one Democrat and one Republican running together.

Moving the political parties toward the center “can’t be done unless they’re threatened,” Manchin added. “The only way you can threaten is if you have people out there that say ‘listen, either side can’t win without the independent.’”

Manchin argued Democrats and Republicans profit off of division and it’s in their interests to work against candidates looking to bridge the divide.

“Their business model is ‘better to be divided than united,” Manchin said. “And we’re gonna change that.”

The 75-year-old has long been a critic of his own party, helping delay or kill major aspects of Biden’s legislative agenda when he saw fit and staking out a position as one of the most conservative Democrats in Washington. His centrist streak has kept him in the Senate for almost 13 years despite representing West Virginia, one of the reddest states in the U.S. and one that voted for Trump by nearly 40% in 2020.

Now facing a Senate reelection campaign in a tough electoral environment, potentially against Jim Justice, West Virginia’s wealthy and popular Republican governor, Manchin has continued to eye an independent campaign for president in what would be his furthest step yet in bucking his fellow Democrats.

“We’re not considering anything about running for any office right now. We’re not taking anything off the table,” Manchin said in an NBC News interview before the forum on Monday, adding any decision on his next steps will come “next year.”

The refusal to rule out a third party run has concerned Democrats who fear it would take away votes from Biden’s reelection bid. In the three key swing states that handed Biden an Electoral College victory in 2020 — Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona — he won a total of 44,000 votes more than Trump.

On Monday, a bipartisan, anti-Trump group launched to push back against No Labels’ efforts.

“If these were normal times, we would have no problem with this,” former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt told PBS Newshour on Monday. “These are not normal times. We avoided having a broken election in 2020 by a whisker. Only because Mike Pence and six or seven state electoral officials, all Republicans, stood up to major pressure from former President Trump did we avoid a broken election.”

The former Missouri congressman helped start the group, Citizens to Save Our Republic, and named former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel — a Republican who served in the Obama administration — and former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, a Democrat who ran for president in 1988, as part of the effort. They view any step that could help Trump win “is a risk we cannot take,” as Gephardt put it. 

“We're in a bad place. These are not normal times. And we're just asking the folks at No Labels to really come to their senses and not do this, if the risk is anywhere near what I think it is,” Gephardt said. 

But for Manchin, the stakes are just as high.

“I'm not here running for president tonight. I'm not. I'm here trying to basically save the nation,” Manchin said at the town hall. “I'm concerned more now than I've ever been concerned in my lifetime.”