Friday, September 4, 2020

BREAKING: Arizona Political Consultants Owed $1.2M To Gather Iffy Signatures Nationally For Kanye West, Although West Lent His Committee $6.7M

So many updates on Kanye West's Presidential campaign, so little time on a pseudo-getaway afternoon.

1) Yesterday, Kanye's filing to get on the ballot in Arizona was rejected. His counsel immediately filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court, and the Court required briefs by 1:00pm. Today. Kanye's counsel filed a short memorandum, below, while the challengers relied on their filings in the trial court.

The Supreme Court will decide the appeal by Tuesday afternoon, as that is the hard deadline for several Arizona counties to send their ballots to the printers.

2) In their trial court pleadings, West's team indicated that they were planning to file additional petition signatures by today's filing deadline. HOWEVER, the trial court's Thursday Order keeping West off of the ballot also instructed the Arizona Secretary of State from accepting any additional filings.

But, even though the injunction is still in place pending the Supreme Court's decision, West petition gatherers went to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office to turn in an additional batch of signatures. They previously turned in more than 57,000 signatures with a requirement that more than 39,039 need to be valid. Today's batch would have brought them to "roughly 100,000" signatures.

However, the Secretary of State's Office did not accept them and, according to West consultant Gregg Keller, their attorneys were informed that the petitions would not be accepted. Keller is now posting on Twitter that there are protests outside the Capitol and tells Arizona's Politics that "dozens" of people are there. 

Video Keller provided shows about two dozen people in "Kanye West 2020" shirts mildly interested in the situation.



Arizona Star columnist Tim Steller published a well-reported piece Wednesday detailing the methods used to obtain some of those Arizona signatures. Those shirts get a mention, in fact. Must read.

3) Kanye's campaign committee finally filed its first finance report today, and it sheds some interesting light on the efforts to get on the ballot. (More to come.)

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