GOP network supports liberal third-party candidates in key states and hopes to steal Harris votes

WASHINGTON – Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer effort to get Cornel West on the North Carolina presidential ballot last spring when he received an unexpected 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 support, the offer complicated his life by eliciting threats and embroiling him in a state election commission investigation into the motives, backgrounds and suspicious tactics of his new allies.

His case is not an isolated one.

Across the country, a network of Republican politicians, lawyers and their allies are trying to influence the November election in favor of former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to support third-party candidates like West who offer an alternative to liberal voters and who could drain support from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

It is not clear who is funding the measure, but it could have an impact in states where the 2020 election, won by Democrat Joe Biden, was decided by a narrow margin.

That's money West's campaign doesn't have, and he has been funding the effort. Last month, the academic told the Associated Press that “American politics is a highly gangster-like operation” and he “just wanted to get on the ballot.”

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

The Democrats are currently exploring ways to put anti-abortion activist Randall Terry of the Constitution Party into the race. They believe he could steal voters from Trump.

But the Republicans' efforts appear to be even more far-reaching. After Trump spent years accusing Democrats of “rigging” the election, it is now his allies who are launching a large-scale and sometimes misleading campaign to influence the election in his favor.

“The fact that one of the two major parties would seek to financially or otherwise support a third-party troublemaker as part of its efforts to win is an unfortunate byproduct” of current election laws “that favor troublemakers,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor and director of the Ohio State University Election Law Program. “This phenomenon is equally problematic no matter which of the two major parties is involved.”

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

Hamrick serves as legal counsel to the Virginia-based nonprofit People Over Party, which, records show, is lobbying to put West on the ballot in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as North Carolina.

In an interview, Hamrick would not say who else orchestrated the operation or reveal who financed it. He vigorously denied any suggestion that he was a Republican, but admitted that he was not a Democrat either.

Its history is complex.

Hamrick was chief of staff to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a one-term Democrat who was ousted in 2003 and later sentenced to prison on bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Hamrick was indicted along with his former boss in two separate cases. He was dismissed in one case and acquitted in the other.

Although he insists he is not a Republican, Hamrick voted in Alabama's Republican primaries in 2002, 2006 and 2010, according to election records from political data firm L2. In 2011, he was briefly selected to work for the Republican majority in the Alabama State Senate. And since 2015, according to federal campaign finance disclosures, he has donated only to Republican causes, including $2,500 to the Alabama Republican Party and $3,300 to Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, a Republican who traffics in conspiracy theories.

Hamrick denied having participated in any Republican primaries and suggested that the election data was inaccurate.

For years he worked as a consultant for Matrix LLC, an Alabama firm known for its tough approach.

Matrix LLC was part of a campaign in Florida that sought to field so-called “ghost candidates” against elected officials who had drawn the ire of leaders at Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest energy provider.

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

Hamrick was deeply involved. A company he founded paid the troublemaker a $60,000 salary and rented a house for him for $2,300 a month, according to newspaper and corporate records in Alabama. Hamrick said the candidate worked for him to help him with prospecting. Hamrick denied having anything to do with the man's campaign.

Either way, it didn't work. Levine Cava was re-elected before winning the mayor's seat in 2020.

Now Hamrick is playing a major role in getting West's name on the ballot in battleground states. Hamrick showed up in Arizona two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a document was fraudulently sent to Arizona's secretary of state in her name, purporting to agree to serve as an elector for West. She said her signature was forged and she never agreed to be an elector.

After the AP published its report, Hamrick said he spoke with the woman's husband to clarify the situation and “gave him some information.” Hamrick would not say what information was shared. According to interviews and voicemails, he also tried to persuade another voter who had backed out to vote for West again.

The next day, just hours before the Arizona voting deadline, Brett Johnson, a prominent Republican attorney, and Amanda Reeve, a former Republican state representative, made house calls to each other, trying to persuade them both to sign new papers to run as electors for the West.

Johnson and Reeve work for the firm Snell & Wilmer, which has handled $257,000 worth of contracts for the Republican National Committee over the past two years, according to campaign finance disclosures.

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

West was not qualified to run in Arizona.

Other Republican-aligned law firms also joined the nationwide initiative, opposing the Democratic-backed challenges to West's inclusion on the ballot:

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

On Thursday, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger overruled an administrative law judge's ruling and placed West, Stein and Socialism 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 the North Carolina State Board of Elections' decision to disqualify West from 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 fought off a challenge to West's inclusion on the ballot. Bursch's firm, Bursch Law PLLC, received $25,000 from the Trump campaign in November 2020 for “RECOUNT: LEGAL CONSULTING,” according to campaign finance disclosures. Bursch did not respond to a request for comment.

— In Pennsylvania in August, a lawyer with longstanding ties to Republican candidates and causes argued unsuccessfully to keep West on the ballot. The lawyer, Matt Haverstick, declined to say in an interview who hired him or why. People Over Party, the group Hamrick belongs to, had been trying to get West on the ballot.

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

In North Carolina, People Over Party worked with Blitz Canvassing and Campaign & Petition Management – two firms that regularly work for Republicans – to collect signatures for West. Hamrick later responded in writing on behalf of workers at the two firms after the state Board of Elections began its investigation.

Jefferson Thomas, a longtime Republican activist from Colorado, submitted signatures to the petition 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 managed West's petition to qualify for the ballot, USA Today previously reported. David Blair, the firm's president, was national director of Youth for Trump and a spokesman for the Trump administration during the 2016 campaign. Blair declined to comment.

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

Medelius, co-chair of West's Justice for All Party in North Carolina, said the partisan battles over third-party candidates amount to “gang warfare.”

“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 writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Farnoush Amiri in Chicago and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.