Until recently, Kanye West was a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, with whom he claims to share “dragon energy.” He even wore a MAGA hat while visiting the Oval Office in 2018. But early last month, the rapper announced he would be running for president himself this cycle. The declaration, seemingly another of West’s publicity stunts, prompted many an eye-roll. Yet recent reports that Republican operatives have been aiding his campaign suggest that GOP members see West’s candidacy as a way to draw votes away from Joe Biden.
West can’t even get on most ballots at this point, having missed the filing deadlines. But he is targeting Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, and, most notably, Wisconsin, a battleground state that will be pivotal come November. Among the Republicans there reportedly trying to help his cause is Lane Ruhland, a prominent elections lawyer who was the former general counsel for the state GOP. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ruhland—who has worked directly for Trump and is currently representing his re-election campaign in a federal lawsuit against a TV station—dropped off “a number of” ballot signatures for West with state regulators, something the Sentinel’s Daniel Bice called “a pretty impressive feat” for a campaign that filed a statement of candidacy less than three weeks ago. When contacted by Vice, Ruhland did not deny her involvement with the campaign.
“It appears that Kanye West made a smart decision by hiring an experienced election attorney,” state GOP spokeswoman Alesha Guenther said of Ruhland. As Bice notes, West’s campaign had to land 10 electors to make it on the ballot in Wisconsin, all of which have to pledge to vote for him in the Electoral College if he were to win the state. Several of them, their social media accounts suggest, “are very big Trump supporters or second- or third-tier Republican activists.”
Other partisan operatives aiding West’s candidacy, the New York Times reported, include Mark Jacoby, who has been collecting signatures for West in three states—including Wisconsin— through a company called Let the Voters Decide, where he is an executive. Jacoby, who said in a statement that his company was nonpartisan and worked for clients of all political parties, was arrested on voter fraud charges while working for the California Republican Party in 2008 and convicted of a misdemeanor. According to New York Magazine, Gregg Keller and Chuck Wilton are also actively aiding West’s bid. Keller, who is listed as the point of contact on West’s ballot submission in Arkansas, has worked for prominent Republican politicians including Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley and was under consideration to be Trump’s campaign manager in 2015. Wilton, one of West’s electors in Vermont, will serve as a delegate for Trump at this year’s Republican National Convention.
Republicans aren’t exactly being subtle about their rationale for supporting West’s run, with Trump himself retweeting a post about how the rapper could take Black votes away from Biden. “That shouldn’t be hard,” Trump added. “Corrupt Joe has done nothing good for Black people!” Roger Stone, the Trump ally and convicted felon whose sentence was commuted by the president last month, has also chimed in. “I really like Kanye West—I like his Christianity, and I like his rejection of identity politics,” Stone told the Times, adding that he is not involved in West’s 2020 bid.
Stone and the Trump campaign also have a history—both in 2016 and this cycle—of pulling stunts in an effort to depress turnout among Black voters, the Times notes. True to form, Stone told the paper that if West’s candidacy was “intended to draw Black votes from Joe Biden, Joe Biden’s own role in the 1994 crime bill” would have already done so.
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