When a Democrat or Republican runs for president, there is usually a stable of low-profile legal experts attached to the party who can help navigate the ballot of ballot access laws.
But if you were, say, music megastar Kanye West throwing up an inaccurate viable presidential bid under the banner of the inaccurate “Birthday Party”, then such a network of partisan legal experts could not be easy to obtain.
Not so. In the last few weeks, Republican-affiliated lawyers and strategists have helped West make the necessary documentation in several major states, in a small-scale effort that was apparently mounted in hopes of getting Black voters away from Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to increase President Trump’s chances of re-election.
In the critical swing state of Wisconsin, local media reported that West’s qualifying paperwork was dismissed by Lane Ruhland, a lawyer who represented the Trump campaign in a lawsuit that had also done legal work for the Republican National Committee, formerly GOP Gov. Scott Walker and the state Republican Party on election issues.
In nearby Ohio, the paperwork was dropped by a lawyer from the Columbus law firm Isaac Wiles, who since 2015 has received tens of thousands of dollars in fees from state Republican campaign commissions since 2015.
West’s efforts in Colorado have been boosted by state GOP operator Rachel George, who sent another Republican strategist with the question: “Would you help me get Kanye West on the ballot in Colorado? “I’m not kidding, and I realize this is hilarious,” according to a Vice News report.
George and the strategist did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did Trump’s campaign. A Biden spokesman declined to comment.
After failing to submit too many deadlines for state to remain even a mathematically plausible candidate, West has indicated about his hopes of lowering Biden’s votes. He told Forbes, ‘I do not deny it, I just told you. To say that the Black vote is democratic is a form of racism and white supremacy. ”
To long-time political observers, there can be no mistaking what drives institutional GOP support for West, who has been one of Trump’s most prominent celebrity supporters through the Republican first term. West visited Trump at Trump Tower and the White House, and the president publicly thanked and complimented West in return.
“One of the oldest tricks in the political game book is to run for a third-party candidate to gain support from your opponent,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with the Biden campaign. “What’s different here is that the third-party candidate is a hip-hop artist who has already said nice things about the current president.”
In the old days organizing something similar would have been in the smoke-filled room; they would sit there at a bar if anything, “said Manley, who called West’s candidacy” a farce, a joke. “
“I do not believe African Americans will vote for Kanye simply because he is on the ballot,” Manley said. “There’s just too much at stake.”
To date, there is no evidence to suggest that West itself may have a marginal impact. One July poll of 2,000 registered voters by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found only 2% support for West, and most respondents said they did not think West’s run was serious.
“West has been a supporter of Trump, at least in a small way; I think most voters know that, ”said Matt Hindman, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tulsa who published research on third-party candidates and legal access rights. “We’re talking about a very small percentage of people who might vote for Kanye West,” and it’s not even a given that those voters might otherwise vote for Biden.
West’s highly public mental health problems have also raised questions about his candidacy. After West hosted one bad campaign event in South Carolina in July, West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West, said her husband had bipolar disorder and asked for compassion and empathy.
“Those who understand mental illness or even compulsive behavior know that the family is powerless unless the member is a minor,” Kardashian West wrote in an Instagram post. “People who are unaware or distant from this experience may be judgmental and do not understand that the individual themselves must participate in the process of getting help, no matter how hard family and friends try.”
At his sometimes tearful rally in South Carolina, West said his anti-abortion plan was to pay parents $ 1 million for having a baby, and he said lifting Harriet Tubman “never freed the slaves; she just had the slaves for other white people at work. ”
Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, a non-partisan election handbook, thinks that in a tight race “it is possible” that West could balance one candidate after another.
“But we still have a long way to go to know if Kanye will have any influence,” Gonzales said, pointing out that questions remain about what state ballots West is eligible for.
It is not clear if the petition from West Wisconsin was dismissed in time; he dropped the signatures needed to qualify in Illinois; he misses the deadlines in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada, where a third-party candidate has the greatest ability to tip the balance. ABC News reported that West’s team could not gather enough signatures to vote in California, the nation’s richest election prize, where it is unlikely to pose a visible threat to Biden.
“We do not know how close the main states will be. We do not know if he will be on the ballot. “We do not know how many votes he will get,” Gonzales said. “For people to say, ‘Oh, Kanye is Black so he’s going to take Black voters out of Biden’ is a crude oversimplification of a more complex situation.”
