Paid operatives tied to GOP firm help Cornel West in Arizona

About a dozen paid agents registered with the Arizona secretary of state on Sunday to collect signatures on behalf of left-wing presidential candidate Cornel West, indicating that their employer was a Republican-leaning firm that recently worked for Republican House candidate Blake Masters.

Arizona, unlike most states, requires paid or out-of-state petition gatherers to register with the state. On their public registrations, some of the traffic wardens who worked to help West get on the ballot in Arizona had trouble spelling his name, listing it as “Carnel west” or “Cornelle West.”

All boxes checked indicate they are out of state and getting paid. All list Wells Marketing LLC — or some variation, with a few spelling errors — as the company they work for.

We don’t know exactly who pays them. Wells Marketing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“The Democratic Party and mainstream media are making up stories that we have ties to GOP operatives. It’s wrong ! said Edwin DeJesus, a spokesman for West’s campaign. “We don’t hire Republicans or Democrats. This is an obvious smear because we defend workers, while they protect the interests of the wealthy elite. »

“They falsely claim that we are helping Trump to discredit us, but we stand with the poor and the working people,” he added.

NBC News recently discovered that Republican-linked operatives were secretly collecting signatures for West in North Carolina, another swing state. Last week, the Democratic majority on the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted against granting West initial ballot access through a new political party created in its name, citing the NBC News report and other concerns.

West will need to collect tens of thousands of signatures to run in Arizona, but West’s campaign is unlikely to pay the fundraisers. The campaign is nearly broke, and its latest financial report shows it owes more money than it has in reserve. And the campaign has said it is ideologically committed to using volunteers rather than paid canvassers.

According to Secretary of State records, Wells Marketing collected signatures earlier this year for several Arizona Republican candidates, including Masters, state Rep. Justin Heap and Republican senatorial candidate Elizabeth Jean Reye. The company also said it worked on behalf of Green Party senatorial candidate Mike Norton, whom the Arizona Green Party has disavowed as one of two major party leadership candidates.

Some prominent Republicans have cast West’s left-wing candidacy as a way to “take votes away from Joe Biden.” West is a prominent Black academic and racial justice activist who has made the plight of Gazans suffering during Israel’s war with Hamas a central plank of his campaign.

Republicans seeking to strengthen the West have said they are focusing on general election battleground states like Arizona, where a few thousand votes could decide whether President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump would win in November.