Tipping the scales US network wants to unseat Harris with third-party candidates

The US presidential election in November is expected to be an extremely close race in several states. Third-party candidates can be spoilers for one side - and a targeted weapon for the other.

Italo Medelius led a campaign in the spring to get US presidential candidate Cornel West on the ballot in the state of North Carolina in November's election. That's when he received an unexpected call from a man calling himself Paul, saying he wanted to help him.

This is not an isolated incident. In various parts of the country, a network of Republican officials, lawyers and other allies are trying to sway the election in former President Donald Trump's favor by backing third-party candidates - people like the theologian and philosopher West, who could attract liberal voters and thus take votes away from Democratic front-runner Kamala Harris.

It's not clear who is funding these efforts. But they could pay off in states that Democrat Joe Biden only narrowly won in 2020,

West, with his small Justice for All party, of which Medelius is co-chair, lacks campaign cash and has welcomed, even encouraged, efforts to promote him. In August, the intellectual told the AP news agency that American politics is a "highly gangster-like activity" and that he "simply wanted to get on that ballot."

Trump cheers: "She takes (too) 100 percent of them"

Trump has called West one of his favorite candidates. Another is Jill Stein of the Green Party. Trump endorses both for the same reason: he can expect them to only feed off the Democratic vote potential. "She takes (too) 100 percent of them. He's taking 100 percent."

Democrats, in turn, are exploring ways to boost Randall Terry, a Constitution Party presidential candidate and strong anti-abortion activist who might cost Trump votes. But the Republicans' aspirations appear to be more far-reaching.

While Trump has accused Democrats of rigging elections for years, his allies in this campaign are running a widespread and sometimes misleading campaign to tilt the scales in Trump's favor.

"Regrettable by-product"

Attempts by both major parties to financially or otherwise support "spoiler candidates" from third parties for the sake of their own victory are an "unfortunate byproduct" of current election laws "that favor spoilers," says Ohio State University law professor Edward B. Foley, who specializes in election law.

A key figure in trying to help Trump is Paul Hamrick, the caller at Medelius in North Carolina. He is legal counsel to the nonprofit organization People Over Party, which has been working to get West on the ballot in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia in addition to North Carolina.

To be able to stand for election in a state, a presidential candidate must fulfill certain, sometimes very complicated requirements. In an interview, Hamrick declined to say who orchestrated the effort besides himself, nor would he say where the finances are coming from .

Network pays candidate salary of 60,000 dollars

He insists he is not a Republican. But he has participated in Republican primaries in Alabama in 2002, 2006 and 2010, according to election records from political data firm L2, and has only supported Republican causes or individuals with donations since 2015, according to federal statistics.

And he was for years a consultant to Matrix LLC, an Alabama firm involved in efforts in Florida to run "ghost candidates" against elected officials who had incurred the wrath of top executives at the state's largest electric company.

Hamrick was heavily involved in the maneuver. In one case, a company he created paid a "spoiler candidate" a salary of 60,000 dollars and rented a house for him for 2300 dollars a month, according to reports in the Miami Herald and business documents.

Allegedly no connections

Hamrick says that the candidate worked for him and that there was no connection whatsoever with the man's election campaign. Now Hamrick is playing a prominent role in getting West's name on the ballot in potentially election-deciding US states.

He turned up in Arizona around two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a forged paper had been submitted in her name to Arizona's Secretary of State - which in US states is the equivalent of a Secretary of the Interior, often also in charge of election procedures.

According to the document, she is said to have agreed to serve as West's elector in the Electoral College, the body of state election officials that ultimately decides the election. According to her, this is not the case.

Candidates as "cannon fodder"

According to the AP report on the incident, Hamrick said he spoke with the woman's husband to rectify the situation and provided "some information" - which he did not say. According to interviews and voicemail messages, he also tried to change the mind of a member of the electoral college who had originally committed to West but then changed his mind.

In addition, a prominent Republican attorney and a former state Republican congresswoman intervened with personal house calls in both cases in the effort to win West votes. In the end, however, the candidate did not qualify for a spot on the Arizona ballot.

Medelius, the co-chair of West's party, likened the attempts to use third-party candidates as weapons, so to speak, to a "war between gangs." "If they want to use us as cannon fodder," he said, "there's not much I can do about it."

dpa