Elon Musk is now threatening to target the country’s two-party political system by creating the “America Party,” but even the world’s richest man could run into roadblocks in trying to establish an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans.

One person who knows a thing or two about starting his own political party on the local level is businessman Ken Block, who formed the Moderate Party of Rhode Island in the late aughts.

Block won 6.5 percent of the vote as the Moderate candidate for governor in 2010, and Robert Healey had a sizable impact on the 2014 race when he earned 21.4 percent. But things quickly fell apart, and the party is essentially defunct now.

I asked Block to tell us more about what it was like to create a party, and to offer some advice to Musk.

Q: You’re not Elon Musk for a lot of reasons, but you created the Moderate Party in Rhode Island for a lot of the same reasons Musk says he thinks there should be a third national party. Was there a specific incident that made you start it?
 
Block: If I was Elon, my response to your questions would be 💩, and I would have bought an island in Narragansett Bay and renamed it Block's Island!

When I woke up politically in 2007, Rhode Island was a more expensive place for me to live and run my businesses than Massachusetts, otherwise known as Taxachusetts. I wrote an opinion piece about this in The Providence Journal, which prompted many people to reach out to me in agreement and support. I hated the political polarization and dysfunction (now I look back at those times as the good old days), and thought that a centrist party would be the answer to those problems, a party dedicated to quality of life issues that stayed away from social issues.

Q: Elon Musk has the benefit of being one of the world’s richest men, but it would take strong organization on the ground in every state to make a third party a reality. Can you take us behind the scenes on how difficult it is to simply create the party, let alone become viable?

Block: Creating a viable third party at the national level is extremely difficult. There are legal roadblocks to clear in each state, where many laws enacted by Democrats and Republicans make it difficult for a new party to establish itself. A couple of billion dollars would go a long way toward clearing the legal and administrative hurdles necessary to launch the party, such as overturning unfair and unconstitutional ballot access laws and collecting millions of signatures. A chicken/egg problem arises as soon as the party is born: you need quality candidates to build momentum, but those same candidates want some assurances that the party is stable and not being overrun with folks with positions contrary to those of the candidates.

Q: Ultimately, you stepped away from your party and ran for governor a second time as a Republican. What didn’t work about the Moderates?

Block: Too many Americans don’t get third parties. As challenging as it is today to define what it means to be a Democrat or a Republican, it is much harder to define a new party and keep everyone on message. We did not recruit nearly enough candidates, let alone good ones. We ended up with political novices, most of whom did not undertake the necessary work to win local races in Rhode Island. Experienced politicians did not want to handicap their election efforts by running under the banner of a fledgling party. It turns out that launching the party was the easy part. I ended up running for governor as the new party’s candidate in 2010 because no one else would, and we needed our candidate to win 5 percent of the vote to keep the party alive. I got 6.5 percent.

Q: What advice would you give to Elon Musk?
 
Block: It is unclear whether Musk intends to build a lasting political party. He has said things that lead me to believe that his party is more about unelecting key Republicans in 2026. If that is his goal, any advice about building a viable party is wasted. If he wants to create a new party that survives and thrives, he will need to buy the infrastructure in each state to make it happen; quality, full-time party chairs and other positions whose jobs would be dedicated to the success of the party, with enough seed money to see the party through the first election.

Q: If you were creating a new party now, would you try to make a connection with Musk?
 
Block: I am sure that Musk is being inundated with requests for his attention and money by those who want to create an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. We desperately need a better choice, as the two major parties move further towards their extremes and spend far more time attacking each other rather than working for the common good. Musk’s messaging before his fallout with Trump was in no way centrist, which makes it hard for me to see how he can credibly claim to represent those in the middle. Let’s see how things play out over the next few months. If Musk’s political aspirations are to create a viable centrist party, I would indeed be interested.