GOP network backs liberal third-party candidates in key states, hoping to steal votes from Harris

WASHINGTON (AP) — Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer effort to get Cornel West on the North Carolina presidential ballot last spring when he got an unexpected phone call from a man named Paul who said he wanted to help.

Although Medelius, co-chair of West’s “Justice for All Party,” welcomed the help, the offer would complicate his life, provoke threats and implicate him in a state election commission investigation into the motives, backgrounds and suspicious tactics of his new allies.

His case is not unique.

Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, advocates and their allies are trying to shape the November election in ways that benefit former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to support third-party candidates like West, who offer liberal voters an alternative that could erode support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

It’s unclear who is paying for this, but it could have an impact in states that were narrowly won by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

This is money West’s campaign doesn’t have, and he has encouraged the effort. Last month, the academic told The Associated Press that “American politics is a very gangster-like activity” and that he “just wanted to get on that ballot.”

Trump has praised West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates.” Another candidate is Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Trump is a supporter of both for the same reason. “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent of them. He takes 100 percent of them.”

Democrats are exploring ways to support Randall Terry, an anti-abortion presidential candidate for the Constitution Party, who they believe could lure voters away from Trump.

But the GOP effort appears to extend further. After years of Trump accusing Democrats of “rigging” elections, it is his allies who are now mounting an elaborate and sometimes misleading campaign to sway votes in his favor.

“The fact that one of the two major parties would seek to financially and otherwise support a third-party spoiler candidate as part of its bid to win is an unfortunate byproduct” of current election laws “that facilitate spoilers,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who directs Ohio State University’s election law program. “This phenomenon is equally problematic regardless of which of the two major parties engages in it.”

A key figure in the campaign is Paul Hamrick, the man on the other end of the line with Medelius in North Carolina.

Hamrick is an attorney for the Virginia-based nonprofit People Over Party, which is working to get West on the ballot in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as North Carolina, documents show.

In an interview, Hamrick declined to say who else orchestrated the effort, and he would not disclose who funded it. He strenuously denied any suggestion that he was a Republican, but acknowledged that he was not a Democrat either.

Its history is complex.

Hamrick was chief of staff to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a one-term Democrat who was removed from office in 2003 and later convicted and sentenced to prison on federal bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Hamrick was indicted along with his former boss in two separate cases. One was dismissed and he was acquitted in the other.

Though he maintains he is not a Republican, Hamrick voted in Alabama’s Republican primary in 2002, 2006 and 2010, according to state voting records maintained by the political data firm L2. In 2011, he was briefly tapped to run for the Alabama Senate’s Republican majority. And since 2015, he has contributed only to GOP causes, according to federal campaign finance disclosures, including $2,500 to the Alabama Republican Party and $3,300 to Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who has traded on conspiracy theories.

Hamrick denied that he had run in the Republican primary, saying the voting data was inaccurate.

For years he was a consultant for Matrix LLC, an Alabama company known for its hard-line approach.

Matrix LLC was part of an effort in Florida to deploy “ghost candidates” against elected officials that had angered executives at Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest utility.

Daniella Levine Cava, the current mayor of Miami-Dade County, was a target. As county commissioner, Levine Cava had fought with FPL. When she ran for re-election in 2018, Matrix secretly funded a third-party candidate they hoped would siphon off enough votes to flip her seat to a Republican challenger, The Miami Herald reported in 2022.

Hamrick was heavily involved. A company he founded paid the spoiler candidate a $60,000 salary and rented him a home for $2,300 a month, according to the newspaper and business records obtained in Alabama. Hamrick said the candidate worked for him to help recruit business. Hamrick denied having anything to do with the man’s campaign.

Either way, it didn’t work. Levine Cava was reelected before winning the mayoral seat in 2020.

Now Hamrick is playing a prominent role in getting West’s name on the ballot in competing states. Hamrick surfaced in Arizona two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a document had been fraudulently filed in her name with the Arizona secretary of state, allegedly agreeing to serve as West’s elector. She said her signature had been forged and that she had never agreed to be an elector.

After the AP published its story, Hamrick said he spoke with the woman’s husband to try to clear up the situation and “give some information.” Hamrick declined to say what information was shared. He also tried to convince another voter who withdrew to recommit to West, according to interviews and voicemails.

The next day, with the deadline to qualify for the Arizona election just hours away, Brett Johnson, a prominent Republican attorney, and Amanda Reeve, a former GOP state legislator, visited both, trying to convince them to sign new documents to serve as electors in the west.

Campaign finance disclosures show that Johnson and Reeve work for Snell & Wilmer, which has done $257,000 in business for the Republican National Committee over the past two years.

Hamrick declined to comment on Johnson and Reeve’s roles. They did not respond to requests for comment.

West did not qualify for the Arizona election.

Other law firms with ties to Republicans are also involved in the national campaign and are opposing Democratic-backed objections to West’s placement on the ballot:

— In Georgia, Bryan Tyson, a partner at the Election Law Group, represented the state’s Republican Party as it tried to keep West on the ballot. The firm has received $60,000 in payments from the RNC since April, campaign finance records show. Tyson did not respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger overrode an administrative law judge and placed West, Stein and Socialist and Liberation Party candidate Claudia De la Cruz on the ballot. Tyson did not respond to a message seeking comment.

— In North Carolina, Phil Strach, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, successfully challenged in court a decision by the North Carolina State Board of Elections to keep West off the ballot. Strach did not respond to a message left for him.

— In Michigan, John Bursch, a senior attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal group that helped overturn Roe v. Wade, successfully fended off a challenge to West’s placement on the ballot. Bursch’s firm, Bursch Law PLLC, received $25,000 from Trump’s campaign in November 2020 for “RECOUNT: LEGAL CONSULTING,” according to campaign finance disclosures. Bursch did not respond to a request for comment.

— In Pennsylvania, an attorney with longstanding ties to Republican candidates and causes unsuccessfully advocated for West to remain on the ballot in August. The attorney, Matt Haverstick, declined in an interview to say who hired him or why. People Over Party, the group Hamrick is affiliated with, had tried to get West on the ballot.

None of these actions were funded by West’s campaign, although he and his party, “Justice for All,” have occasionally worked with Hamrick’s People Over Party, according to legal documents, a press release and social media posts.

In North Carolina, People Over Party hired Blitz Canvassing and Campaign & Petition Management — two firms that regularly work for the GOP — to collect signatures for West. Hamrick later responded in writing on behalf of employees of the two firms after the state election board opened its investigation.

Jefferson Thomas, a longtime Republican operative from Colorado, submitted petition signatures that his company, The Synapse Group, collected on Stein’s behalf in New Hampshire, records show. He did not respond to requests for comment.

In Wisconsin, Blair Group Consulting oversaw West’s petition-signing drive to qualify for the ballot, as previously reported by USA Today. David Blair, the firm’s president, was the national director of Youth for Trump during the 2016 campaign and has been a spokesman in the Trump administration. Blair declined to comment.

Mark Jacoby, whose signature-gathering firm Let the Voters Decide often works for Republicans, was involved in the failed Arizona effort to put West on the ballot. The California agent was convicted of voter registration fraud in 2009, court records show. Jacoby did not respond to a message left at a phone number provided to him.

Medelius, the co-chair of West’s North Carolina Justice for All Party, said the partisan battles over third-party candidates amounted to a “turf war.”

“If they want to use us as cannon fodder, there’s not much I can do about it,” he said.

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Associated Press journalists Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Farnoush Amiri in Chicago and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

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