Despite efforts to start the process of his campaign for the upcoming presidential election, Kanye West is no longer running for office.
According to several campaign professionals, the rapper and his team began working on including his name on the ballots in multiple states as a third-party candidate, in opposition to Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Before dropping out, Kanye’s team contacted an Intelligencer source about going to Florida to earn the required number of votes (132,781) to make it on the state’s ballot before the July 15 deadline. The outlet spoke with Steve Kramer, who was hired by the rapper’s team to help get West on the ballots in Florida and South Carolina.
Kramer told that outlet that West’s team composed of paid and non-paid workers worked hard to gather the necessary signatures to get him on the ballot.
“[West’s team was] working over [the] weekend there, formalizing the FEC and other things that they’ve got to do when you have a lot of corporate lawyers involved. We had overwhelming support to get him on the ballot. Whether anybody is going to vote for him or not is up to them.”
On July 9, when the outlet attempted to reach the rapper’s publicist for more information regarding adding his name to the ballot, Kramer later informed them that West is no longer running.
“He’s out,” Kramer said.
When Intelligencer asked why West was no longer moving forward with the ballots, Kramer responded:
“I’ll let you know what I know once I get all our stuff canceled. We had over 180 people out there today.”
An hour later, West posted a video of himself registering to vote for the first time in Wyoming, on Twitter.
In the video, he commented: “I want to show you how I just registered to vote.”
When Kramer spoke with the outlet, later on, he stated:
“I have nothing good or bad to say about Kanye. Everyone has their personal decision about why they make decisions. Running for president has to be one of the hardest things for someone to actually contemplate at that level. Any candidate running for president for the first time goes through these hiccups.”
