Kanye West’s oddball run for president
>>Kanye West wants to bring back prayer in schools, give more government support to religious groups and has even asked his campaign staff to refrain from “fornicating” outside marriage, according to people aiding his candidacy.
West, the billionaire hip-hop artist and fashion mogul turned Christian revivalist, is not running for president but “walking”, as he puts it. He entered the race late and is not going to make the ballot in states including Florida, Texas and Michigan, but he will be on the ballot in others like Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa. Some Democrats fear he could be a spoiler, even if his political appeal is minuscule. Third-party candidacies don’t need that many votes to make an impact, as Jill Stein showed in 2016 and Ralph Nader in 2000.
In calls and texts with The New York Times, West made clear he believes he will become president one day but said almost nothing about what he actually wanted to do if elected. Indeed, West’s curio candidacy has confused many fans and voters alike.
His party is called the Birthday Party. His first piece of campaign art included pictures of that well-known populist Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, and of actress Kirsten Dunst, who was puzzled (“What’s the message here,” she tweeted, “and why am I a part of it?”).
An inescapable element of West’s candidacy is his bipolar disorder, which he has spoken about in the past. His wife, Kim Kardashian West, opened up about it after West’s only campaign appearance, in South Carolina, during which he broke down crying. Writing on Instagram, she called him a “brilliant but complicated person” who has to deal with “pressure and isolation that is heightened by his bipolar disorder.”
Because a variety of allies and supporters of President Donald Trump are working on the ground to advance his campaign, many Democrats view his candidacy as a dirty trick by Republicans, a notion that West has rejected. Still, in a year in which the president is working to undermine confidence in the election, West’s candidacy is one more point of uncertainty. And many Republicans, including Mr Trump, appear confident he will siphon votes from Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee.
West has a bare-bones platform, focusing on general objectives like reforming the police, reducing household and student loan debt, and “restoring prayer in the classroom,” with each point reinforced by a bit of scripture. In discussions, the topic he brought up most was his opposition to abortion. He does not, however, want to ban abortion.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want to ban or stop or point fingers at anything.” Instead, he said he supported “stipends for families that need support, creating orphanages that are really high-level desirable for people to go to, and the redesign of communities and cities in general to be supporting of families.”
He didn’t elaborate on his views on other issues when asked, saying at one point that he had an album to finish. On Wednesday, West renewed questions about his behaviour after tweeting a video in which someone appeared to urinate on a Grammy statuette; referring to himself as “baby Putin”; and, in a tweet that was removed by Twitter, posting the phone number of a top magazine editor whom he called a “white supremacist”.
West campaign’s recent filing to the Federal Election Commission showed that West had lent the campaign nearly $7 million (217.5 million baht). The filing showed that West had also brought on both a Republican-oriented firm, the Atlas Strategy Group, and a Democratic-leaning one, Millennial Strategies, to help get him on the ballot.
West first called a Times reporter for this article on Aug 11, close to midnight on the East Coast but a couple of hours earlier in Cody, Wyoming, where he lives. He had just tweeted, “I’m willing to do a live interview with the New York Time about my meeting with Jared,” referring to a recent meeting he had with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-inlaw, that The Times had inquired about.
During the call, West was upset and insisted on a live interview on Zoom, demanding the editor of The Times be present as well, to which The Times reporter demurred. “I’m Kanye, who are you?” West asked, adding, “I’m the head of everything.”
West opened up further in a recent interview with Nick Cannon, the actor and podcast host, in which he was dismissive of Mr Biden and said: “Let me tell you who’s the most racist, the liberal racist. When a white person can tell me you’re going to split the vote, better not step past the line, boy.”
He also said his political aspirations would not end in 2020. “The reason why I know eventually — eventually could be three months, eventually could be 3.5 years — the reason why I eventually will make a great president is because I’m sensitive,” West said. “I’m here to serve. Even as a Gemini, I feel the energy in the room, I read body language, I read this energy, and I hurt. I hurt for the country, I hurt not just black people, but all people of America. And I hurt for all people of the world.”