Republicans are central in an effort to rescue Cornel West’s ballot hopes in Arizona

WASHINGTON — A group of lawyers with close ties to the Republican Party joined forces over the weekend to salvage an effort to save the U.S. Constitution. independent presidential candidate Cornel West on the Arizona ballot box, providing one of the clearest examples yet of the GOP’s extensive involvement in furthering the left-wing academic’s hopeless effort.

As the deadline for filing the necessary paperwork approached, two well-known Republican attorneys in the state and an attorney trying to get West on the ballot elsewhere learned that two of their potential electors – Jerry Judie and Denisha Mitchell — were not interested in filling the role. The voters’ decisions prompted a barrage of text messages and phone calls to keep the operation alive. When those efforts failed, two Republican lawyers visited Judie and Mitchell’s homes, ostensibly to convince them to reconsider.

This work appears to be part of a broader effort by conservative and Republican activists across the country to promote West’s candidacy and undermine the integrity of the vote in the months leading up to the November presidential election. Republicans are eager for West to disrupt the 2024 presidential election by siphoning off voters who would otherwise likely support the Democratic nominee.

“I am officially no longer interested in being an elector,” Judie, a 62-year-old retired park ranger for the city of Phoenix, said when a staffer working to get West on the ballot texted him and asked if he could meet him at a local hotel to sign another document.

Judie told The Associated Press that he had been a fan of West since he was in his 20s, drawn to his ideas and passion. He was excited when he learned earlier this year that West was running for president and was pursuing a shot at becoming an elector for the progressives’ campaign. But Judie began to waver on that idea after President Joe Biden ended his campaign last month, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

“When she was in the driver’s seat, it changed the game,” he said. “It changed everything for me, my family and the people I know. It was like magic.”

To qualify for the ballot, Arizona law requires independent presidential candidates to nominate a slate of electors who would cast their Electoral College electors. After Judie told the agent she was no longer interested in representing West’s campaign, he received a series of phone calls, according to call transcripts provided to the AP, from people working on the campaign, along with a visit to his home from two Republican attorneys hoping to get West on the ballot.

“I’m sorry … we gave you the f*ck,” Paul Hamrick, an attorney who has been involved in getting West on the ballot in other states, said in a voicemail to Judie obtained by the AP. “The reason we’ve been trying to reach you is that we’ve discovered in the last 24 hours that we have to get everybody to sign a letter that Dr. West signed.”

Hamrick then said he knew Judie didn’t want to be a voter anymore. “Is there anything you can tell me about that or did someone encourage you not to do that?” Hamrick asked.

Judie said two people came to his door to talk to him after he got the voicemail. He didn’t answer or speak to them — assuming they wanted to talk about West — but someone Judie knows spoke to them and they identified themselves as Amanda Reeve and Brett Johnson, two well-known attorneys from the Snell law firm & Wilmer.

Reeve is a former Republican state representative and Johnson is a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Reeve and Johnson’s firm has extensive work for the Republican National Committee, GOP candidates and conservative groups, campaign finance disclosures show.

Republicans and their allies have been working to get West on the ballots in Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, all in the hope that West will boost former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning later this year by withdrawing Harris’s endorsement. West doesn’t have to win a state to be a spoiler candidate — a few thousand votes in swing states could make all the difference.

Reeve also called Mitchell after the AP reported on friday that she signed an oath declaring that she had not consented to be a voter for West and that she had never signed an application, claiming that the document filed in her name was forged.

“We need to get this information out as quickly as possible,” Reeve told Mitchell in a voicemail Friday, saying her firm represented “the Cornel West campaign.”

“It has to be ready by tomorrow morning,” Reeve emphasized.

On Saturday, two people — one who appeared to be Johnson and another who appeared to be Reeve — visited Mitchell’s home, according to doorbell camera footage obtained by the AP. The two rang the doorbell and left, without speaking to anyone inside the home.

Neither Johnson nor Reeve responded to phone calls or emails requesting comment for this story.

Mitchell said that after the AP story was published on Friday — in which she said she “didn’t even know what a voter was” and that the paperwork was “falsified” and full of errors — she received a phone call from someone who had handled petition work for the West. She missed the call, but when she called back, she was transferred to Hamrick.

Hamrick, an Alabama attorney, said the allegations against him were “false” when they emerged Sunday night, but declined to comment further.

Mitchell and Judie’s cases are the latest examples of the questionable tactics being used to get West on the ballot nationwide. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Mitchell, who was drawn to West’s progressive message before learning that Republican operatives were working to get him on the ballot, told the AP on Friday that she did not know who had filled out the paperwork in her name and called it “forged.” She and her husband previously worked for a signature-gathering contractor called Wells Marketing, where they collected signatures to get an initiative on the ballot that would have raised wages for tipped workers in Arizona.

Wells Marketing, a mysterious Missouri limited liability company, also led the effort to gather the signatures needed to get West on the Arizona ballot.

The company is tied to Mark Jacoby — a brother-in-law of a Wells Marketing official, according to social media posts — who is listed in state records as the employer of a signature gatherer who wants to get West on the ballot. Jacoby is a Republican operative with a reputation for using deceptive tactics. He was convicted of voter registration fraud in 2009, according to court records.

Jacoby also worked in 2020 to gather signatures to put rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on the presidential ballot. Democrats have widely seen the campaign as an attempt to damage President Joe Biden’s popularity among black voters. Jacoby didn’t answer a number provided to him on Friday, and his voicemail box was full.

Judie, looking back on the chaotic last three days, said he was left with an uneasy feeling, especially since he still has respect for West.

“They only had one reason to do it,” Judie said. “Just to get him on the ballot, so that some of the votes would go to him and not to other people.”

A spokesman for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, declined to comment Sunday. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office did not respond to a request for comment. It is unclear whether West qualified for the Arizona ballot.

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Associated Press editor Jonathan J. Cooper contributed from Phoenix.