MANCHESTER, N.H. — West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin leaned into the intrigue of a presidential bid in Manchester Friday morning, but stopped short of announcing any news. Again.
Manchin, the centrist Democrat who has been long-speculated for a third-party presidential bid on a No Labels ticket, attempted to insert himself into the political conversation less than two weeks before the first-in-the-nation primary here.
And with all of the major candidates stuck in snowy Iowa for the Monday caucuses, Manchin’s was the only show in town.
“Everyone says, ‘Are you running for this or running for that?’ I said, no. I’m running the race to bring the country together,” he told the crowd at the Politics and Eggs event, which is hosted by Saint Anselm College and the New England Council and typically reserved for candidates running for public office.
“I’m not here campaigning. I’m here, basically, concerned about my country,” he said.
In November, Manchin confirmed that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection to the Senate, complicating Democrats’ hopes of holding their slim majority in the chamber in 2024. But he didn’t disclose any other concrete plans.
In announcing that he wouldn’t run for reelection to the Senate, he said he would be “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” Friday marked the first stop on his two-month winter “Americans Together” tour to find out whether there is a national “movement” for a third-party ticket.
Manchin has yet to rule out a potential third-party bid.
“We’re trying to create that home there where people want to run and want to be involved, whether you want to run as a Democrat or Republican,” he said. “I’ve never believed that the identification of what party you belong to identified you as a person. I never believed that.”
The Politics and Eggs event marked Manchin’s second visit to the early state in less than a year.
“We’ve gotten to the conclusion and you know what? Those of us in the middle had an awful lot of power,” he told attendees Friday. “They couldn’t get anything done without us.”
The event kicked off with a video advertisement for “Americans Together,” a nonprofit run by his daughter, former pharmaceutical executive Heather Manchin. The effort is separate from No Labels.
The No Labels movement was started by a Democratic fund-raiser and Republican strategist shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, in the wake of the Tea Party’s rise. In 2013, the group helped establish the Problem Solvers Caucus, where House members from swing districts could prove their bipartisanship to constituents.
Last year, the group announced it might launch an independent presidential candidate if Donald Trump and President Biden were to be the nominees of their respective parties. That has caused heartburn among Democrats, specifically, who worry a third-party bid would help Trump win the general election.
Manchin is the person most often mentioned to lead a potential No Labels presidential ticket, if one were to form.
Attendees at the Friday breakfast, who included former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Chris Ager, proved to be curious by what Manchin said or, in the end, didn’t say.
“I’d hope to see Senator Manchin on a No Labels ticket,” Weld said on his way out the door.
Former Boston City Councilor Frank Baker, who attended Friday, said he thought Manchin’s pitch was “great,” though he doesn’t expect the senator to “play the spoiler” in the presidential this year.
“I loved him. I have actually been compared to Joe Manchin and people would say it in a bad way,” said Baker, who was known as the most conservative voice on the council. “I say that’s the best thing you could ever say.”
Not everyone was so excited.
Political consultant Lucas Meyer is among those Democrats who fear the effect of a third-party bid on Trump’s reelection.
Meyer, who used to run state races and once served as press secretary for the New Hampshire Democratic Party, called the No Labels party “foolish” and “an operation in vanity.”
“The gravity of a possible Trump presidency has a lot of really dangerous implications,” said Meyer, a Manchester resident who plans to write in Joe Biden in the Jan. 23 primary. “I am sincerely curious what he’s doing. Like if this is any sort of flirtation with a presidential run, I do not understand like logically.”
The appearance Friday was more sideshow than news event, though Manchin used the wide press coverage and audience to elevate his organization, No Labels, which is meant to “empower moderate voices around the country.”
When one attendee asked Manchin how he or his No Labels organization plans to carry its work into the presidential election, he didn’t give a clear answer.
“This is not the short game, this is a long game,” he said. “If it has an impact or not I don’t know. We’re gonna find out.”
After the breakfast, Manchin moseyed to a Derry, N.H., diner — again, another popular stop for candidates — to confab with voters.
The event, which was briefly interrupted by climate activists, was held in a separate dining room with a handful of reporters, a small group of voters, and students from a political science class at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
They asked him about some of his more controversial votes, his role in torpedoing Biden’s original “Build Back Better” act, and whether he thinks retiring University of Alabama head coach Nick Saban (a personal friend of Manchin’s) should launch a campaign against Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville.
One brave person cut to the chase: What are you doing here?
“We’re trying to basically energize you all,” he said. “You might be leaning left and you might be leaning right, but you don’t feel comfortable going left or right. You all are the voice of an independent or center-left or center-right.”
Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross.