Cornel West Ditches Green Party to Pursue Independent Bid for President
- 7 months ago
Cornel West Ditches Green Party to Pursue Independent Bid for President.
Cornel West, the left-wing academic and third-party presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will not seek the Green Party’s nomination for president, running instead as an independent.
The West campaign gave little explanation for the move, which appeared counterproductive to his goal of getting his name on ballots nationwide, but noted his desire not to be constrained by a party platform and the complexities of the Green Party’s nominating process.
“The best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100 percent on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics,” his campaign said in a statement.
The decision is likely to be a welcome one for Democrats, who have in the past fought to keep Green Party candidates off state ballots. The Democratic Party is facing the prospect of a 2024 election in which multiple high-profile third-party candidates are on the ballot, and are likelier to sway voters away from Joseph R. Biden than from a Republican challenger.
Although Mr. West remains a candidate, he will now have to navigate the complex and time-consuming project of qualifying for the ballot in individual states, without the support of the Green Party.
Prominent Democrats such as David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist, and Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, have criticized Mr. West for running, warning that he risks enabling a Republican victory. Even some longtime allies on the left outside of the Democratic Party, like Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, have said that the stakes of the 2024 election have led them to support Mr. Biden.
Mr. West, a best-selling author, would have been the highest-profile candidate the Green Party had fielded in a presidential election since Ralph Nader, whose candidacy many Democrats still blame for Vice President Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000.
The number of votes received by the party’s 2016 nominee, Jill Stein, in three battleground states would have been enough for Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in the election — although exit polls in one of the states, Michigan, found that only a quarter of Ms. Stein’s voters said they would otherwise have voted for Ms. Clinton.
When Mr. West announced his candidacy in June, he said he intended to run for the nomination of the People’s Party, a minor party run by veterans of Mr. Sanders’s political organization. In an interview last week, Mr. West cited the Green Party’s superior ballot access as one reason for his switch.
“The main thing is, they had assets in one state,” he said of the People’s Party. The Green Party was ultimately able to get on the ballot in 30 states in 2020, including three of the eight most competitive battleground states.
It says it has qualified for access to the ballot in four of those states for 2024: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan
Cornel West, the left-wing academic and third-party presidential candidate, said Thursday that he will not seek the Green Party’s nomination for president, running instead as an independent.
The West campaign gave little explanation for the move, which appeared counterproductive to his goal of getting his name on ballots nationwide, but noted his desire not to be constrained by a party platform and the complexities of the Green Party’s nominating process.
“The best way to challenge the entrenched system is by focusing 100 percent on the people, not on the intricacies of internal party dynamics,” his campaign said in a statement.
The decision is likely to be a welcome one for Democrats, who have in the past fought to keep Green Party candidates off state ballots. The Democratic Party is facing the prospect of a 2024 election in which multiple high-profile third-party candidates are on the ballot, and are likelier to sway voters away from Joseph R. Biden than from a Republican challenger.
Although Mr. West remains a candidate, he will now have to navigate the complex and time-consuming project of qualifying for the ballot in individual states, without the support of the Green Party.
Prominent Democrats such as David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist, and Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, have criticized Mr. West for running, warning that he risks enabling a Republican victory. Even some longtime allies on the left outside of the Democratic Party, like Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, have said that the stakes of the 2024 election have led them to support Mr. Biden.
Mr. West, a best-selling author, would have been the highest-profile candidate the Green Party had fielded in a presidential election since Ralph Nader, whose candidacy many Democrats still blame for Vice President Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000.
The number of votes received by the party’s 2016 nominee, Jill Stein, in three battleground states would have been enough for Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump in the election — although exit polls in one of the states, Michigan, found that only a quarter of Ms. Stein’s voters said they would otherwise have voted for Ms. Clinton.
When Mr. West announced his candidacy in June, he said he intended to run for the nomination of the People’s Party, a minor party run by veterans of Mr. Sanders’s political organization. In an interview last week, Mr. West cited the Green Party’s superior ballot access as one reason for his switch.
“The main thing is, they had assets in one state,” he said of the People’s Party. The Green Party was ultimately able to get on the ballot in 30 states in 2020, including three of the eight most competitive battleground states.
It says it has qualified for access to the ballot in four of those states for 2024: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan