Rapper and producer Kanye West will be on Tennessee’s presidential ballot in November, the state election’s office confirmed.
The secretary of state’s office announced this week that West cleared the 275 verified signature threshold to qualify as an unaffiliated presidential candidate. He will appear on the ballot with running mate Michelle Tidball, a 57-year-old spiritual coach from Cody, Wyoming.
West has qualified in a handful of states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma and Utah.
West announced a presidential bid in July, saying he’s seeking the nation’s highest office on a ticket he calls the “Birthday Party.”
West has since been gathering signatures to get on the ballot in several states. Democrats claim Republicans are pushing West’s candidacy in several swing states to siphon Black votes from Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
West, who once backed Republican President Donald Trump, announced last month that he had broken with Trump and would launch his own presidential bid.
Trump won Tennessee’s presidential election in 2016 by 26 percentage points, carrying all but four of the state’s 95 counties.
Perennial candidate Rocky de la Fuente along with Jo Jorgensen and Alyson Kennedy have also qualified as independent presidential candidates in Tennessee. Other candidates are still being reviewed by the secretary of state’s office.
Meantime, West sued Ohio’s election chief Wednesday in an effort to be placed on the November presidential ballot after the secretary of state deemed him unqualified as an independent candidate.
West's emergency filing against Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose comes days after the election's chief rejected the nearly 15,000 signatures and other paperwork the rapper submitted earlier this month in an attempt to run for president, citing mismatched information on the signature-gathering documents.
In the complaint, attorneys for West’s campaign in Ohio allege that it is LaRose’s duty to accept any petition for an independent candidate as long as there is no protest filed against the petition and it doesn’t violate Ohio law.
Ohio was one of a number of states that denied West’s petition to appear on their ballot last week. On Friday, the state elections board in Illinois said West hadn’t submitted enough petition signatures and wouldn’t be on the ballot. On Thursday, Wisconsin election officials decided to keep West off the battleground state’s presidential ballot because his campaign turned in his nomination papers moments after the deadline, while officials in Montana also said he fell short of petitions.
Earlier this month, West without explanation withdrew his petition to appear as a presidential candidate on New Jersey’s ballot. He also missed deadlines or was rejected in numerous other states this summer, including California, Florida and Pennsylvania.
While West has seen momentum in some states, it remains unclear what the status of his presidential campaign is less than three months from Election Day. His wife, Kim Kardashian West, asked for the public’s empathy and said West is bipolar after he delivered a controversial address at his campaign introduction speech in South Carolina last month, when he proposed a $1 million payout to mothers and decried Harriet Tubman for her work on the Underground Railroad.
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