A dozen paid agents showed up at the Arizona Secretary of State’s office on Sunday to collect signatures on behalf of the left-wing presidential candidate Cornel Westand named their employer as a Republican-leaning company that recently worked for Republican House candidate Blake Masters.
Arizona, unlike most states, requires paid or out-of-state petition collectors to register with the state. In their public filings, some circulators working to help West get out the vote in Arizona had difficulty spelling his name and listing it as “Carnel West” or “Cornelle West.”
All the checked boxes indicate that they are out of state and are being paid. All listed Wells Marketing LLC — or some variation, with a few misspellings — as the company they work for.
It is unclear who is paying them. Wells Marketing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The Democratic Party and mainstream media are making up stories about our ties to GOP operatives. False!” said West campaign spokesman Edwin DeJesus. “We don’t hire Republicans or Democrats. This is a clear smear campaign because we stand up for workers while they protect the interests of the wealthy elite.”
“They falsely claim that we are helping Trump to discredit us, but we stand with poor and working people,” he added.
NBC News recently exposed Republican-affiliated operatives secretly collecting signatures for West in North Carolina, another key swing state. Last week, the Democratic majority on North Carolina’s State Board of Elections voted against granting initial voting rights to the West through a new political party created on its behalf, citing the NBC News report and other concerns.
West will need to gather tens of thousands of signatures to get on the ballot in Arizona, but it’s unlikely the West campaign will pay the circulators. The campaign is effectively bankrupt, reporting in its most recent campaign finance report that it owed more money than it had available. And the campaign has said it is ideologically committed to using volunteers rather than paid canvassers.
Wells Marketing collected signatures for several Arizona Republican candidates earlier this year, including Masters, state Rep. Justin Heap and Republican Senate candidate Elizabeth Jean Reye, according to records from the secretary of state. It also said it was working on behalf of Green Party Senate candidate Mike Norton, who was rejected by the Arizona Green Party as one of two plants running on behalf of the major parties.
Some prominent Republicans have promoted West’s left-wing candidacy as a way to “take votes away from Joe Biden.” West is a renowned black academic and racial justice activist who has focused his campaign on the plight of Gazans suffering during Israel’s war against Hamas.
Republicans looking to boost the West have said they are targeting general election battleground states such as Arizona, where a few thousand votes could decide whether President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump wins in November.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
