WASHINGTON (AP) — Italo Medelius is Cornel West Last spring, while I was running for president in North Carolina, I got an unexpected call from a man named Paul who wanted to help me.
Medelius, co-chair of West's Justice for All party, welcomed the support, but the offer will complicate his life, invite threats and embroil him in a state elections board investigation into his new ally's motives, background and questionable tactics.
His case is not an isolated one.
A network of Republican political activists, lawyers and allies are working across the country to try to tilt the November election in former President Donald Trump's favor by backing third-party candidates like West who offer liberal voters an option that could sway them away from Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
It's unclear who would fund the effort, but it could have a major impact in a state that was narrowly decided in the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden.
It's money that West's campaign doesn't have, and he has encouraged the effort. “American politics is a very gangster operation,” the scholar told The Associated Press last month. “We just wanted to get on the ballot.”
Trump has praised West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates,” along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Trump supports both for the same reason: “I like her so much. You know why? She gets 100% out of them. He gets 100% out of them.”
Democrats believe that Randall Terry, the Constitution Party's anti-abortion presidential candidate, can draw votes from Trump and are exploring ways to win his support.
But the Republican effort appears to be more far-reaching: After years of Trump accusing Democrats of “rigging” the election, his allies are now waging a widespread, sometimes deceptive, campaign to tilt the vote in his favor.
“The fact that either of the two major parties would seek to financially and otherwise support a third-party disruptive candidate as part of their efforts to win is an unfortunate by-product of current election laws that encourage disruptors,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who heads the election law program at Ohio State University. “This phenomenon is equally problematic no matter which of the two major parties is involved.”
One of the key players in this effort is Paul Hamrick, who handles the calls with Medelius in North Carolina.
Hamrick serves as counsel to the Virginia-based nonprofit group People Over Party, which has lobbied to put West on the ballot in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, records show.
In an interview, Hamrick declined to say who else is leading the effort or who is funding it, and he vigorously disputed any suggestion he is a Republican but acknowledged that he is not a Democrat.
His history is complicated.
Hamrick was chief of staff to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat who served one term before being ousted in 2003 and later convicted and sentenced to prison on federal bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Hamrick and his former boss were indicted in two separate cases, one of which was dismissed and the other of which they were acquitted of.
Hamrick claims to be a non-Republican, but Alabama voting records kept by political data company L2 show that he voted in the state's Republican primary in 2002, 2006 and 2010. In 2011, he briefly worked for the Republican majority in the Alabama Senate, and has donated exclusively to Republican causes since 2015, including $2,500 to the Alabama Republican Party and $3,300 to conspiracy-mongering Republican Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, according to his federal campaign finance disclosure forms.
Hamrick denied voting in the Republican primary and suggested the voting data was inaccurate.
For many years he was a consultant to Matrix LLC, an Alabama company known for its hardline approach.
Matrix LLC was part of an effort in Florida to field “ghost candidates” against elected officials that drew the ire of executives at Florida Power & Light, the state's largest utility.
Current Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levin Cava was a target. As a county commissioner, Levin Cava has fought FPL. When she ran for reelection in 2018, Matrix secretly funded a third-party candidate in hopes of stealing enough votes to hand the seat to a Republican candidate, the Miami Herald reported in 2022.
Hamrick was deeply involved: A company he founded paid the obstructionist a $60,000 salary and rented him a house for $2,300 a month, according to the paper and business reports filed in Alabama. Hamrick said the obstructionist worked for him and solicited business. He denied having any involvement in the candidate's campaign.
Either way, it didn't work out, and Levin Cava was re-elected before winning the mayor's seat in 2020.
Hamrick is now playing a key role in getting West's name on the ballot in battleground states. Hamrick's appearance in Arizona comes two weeks after a woman told The Associated Press that paperwork had been fraudulently submitted in her name to the Arizona Secretary of State and that she had agreed to serve as an elector for West. She said her signature was forged and that she never agreed to be an elector.
After the Associated Press published the woman's story, Mr. Hamrick said he spoke with the woman's husband to try to rectify the situation and “provided some information.” He did not say what information he provided. He also tried to persuade another withdrawn campaign member to run against Mr. West again, according to the interview and voicemails.
The next day, with just hours to go until Arizona's deadline to qualify to vote, prominent Republican lawyer Brett Johnson and former Republican state Rep. Amanda Reeve visited both men at their homes to try to convince them to sign new paperwork to serve as Western electors.
Johnson and Reeve both worked for Snell & Wilmer, a firm that did $257,000 worth of business for the Republican National Committee over the past two years, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Hamrick declined to comment on the roles of Johnson and Reeve, who also did not respond to requests for comment.
West was not eligible to vote in Arizona.
Other Republican law firms have joined the national movement to oppose the Democratic-backed challenge to West's candidacy.
— In Georgia, Election Law Group partner Brian Tyson represented the state's Republican Party in its efforts to keep West campaigning. Campaign finance records show the firm has raised $60,000 from the Republican National Committee since April. Tyson did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger overruled the administrative law judge and placed West, Stein and Socialism and Liberation Party candidate Claudia de la Cruz on the ballot. Tyson did not respond to messages seeking comment.
— In North Carolina, Republican National Lawyers Association member Phil Strzok won a court challenge to the North Carolina State Election Commission's decision to remove West from the ballot. Strzok did not respond to messages left for him.
In Michigan, John Bursh, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that helped overturn Roe v. Wade, successfully fended off challenges to West's ballot inclusion. Bursh's law firm, Bursh Law PLLC, received $25,000 in “recount: legal consulting” fees from the Trump campaign in November 2020, according to campaign finance disclosures. Bursh did not respond to a request for comment.
In Pennsylvania, a lawyer with longtime ties to Republican candidates and causes tried unsuccessfully in August to keep Mr. West on the ballot. In an interview, the lawyer, Matt Haberstick, declined to say who hired him or why. The group that Mr. Hamrick is a member of, People Over Party, was trying to get Mr. West on the ballot.
West and his Justice for All party have worked with Hamrick's People Over party at times, according to legal filings, news releases and social media posts, but none of that activity was funded by West's campaign.
In North Carolina, the People Over Party worked with Blitz Canvassing and Campaign & Petition Management, two companies that regularly work for the Republican Party, to collect West's signatures. After the state elections board launched an investigation, Hamrick responded in writing on behalf of employees of the two companies.
Jefferson Thomas, a longtime Republican activist from Colorado, submitted the petition signatures collected by his company, Synapse Group, on Stein's behalf in New Hampshire, records show. He did not respond to requests for comment.
In Wisconsin, Blair Group Consulting oversaw the petition drive to get West on the ballot, as previously reported by USA Today. The firm's president, David Blair, was national director of Youth for Trump during the 2016 campaign and a spokesman for the Trump administration. Blair declined to comment.
Mark Jacoby's signature-gathering company, Let the Voters Decide, often works for Republicans and was involved in the failed Arizona effort to get West on the ballot. The California activist was convicted of voter registration fraud in 2009, according to court records. Jacoby did not respond to messages left at his phone number.
Medelius, North Carolina co-chair of West's Justice for All party, said the partisan fight over a third-party candidate is akin to a “gang war.”
“If they want to use us as cannon fodder, there's not much I can do,” he said.
