While a herd of GOP candidates are trying to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to unseat Donald Trump as the Republican who will take on President Joe Biden in next year’s election, there is now at least one no-chance campaign you can scratch off the list.
Kanye West‘s personal attorney, Bruce Marks, told Rolling Stone on Thursday (Oct. 19) that the rapper who now goes by just Ye will not throw his hat in the ring a second time. “He’s not a candidate for office in 2024,” said Marks, who is reportedly working on winding down the rapper’s campaign, seemingly before it even got started.
An October Federal Election Commission filing by Ye’s Kanye 2020 political committee showed that the campaign had allocated zero dollars for primary expenditures in all 50 states and U.S. territories in the most recent reporting period from January to September of this year; it also appeared to show that the campaign raised zero dollars in the most recent reporting period and had less than $25,000 cash-on-hand.
At press time Marks had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the winding-down of Ye’s presidential bid.
West’s once formidable music and fashion career melted down last year after the rapper went on a hateful string of antisemitic rants. He has kept a low profile since then and the news of his halted second bid for the White House is not surprising giving the anemic showing of his first run.
Ye announced the launch of his long-shot presidential campaign under the “Birthday Party” banner on July 4, 2020, so late in the game that he managed to get on the ballot in just 12 states. With only one campaign appearance and two 11th hour video ads, despite what could have been a major pop culture megaphone and built-in audience of millions, West’s vote totals in the election between one-term president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden resulted in a grand total of 60,000 votes after the rapper reportedly pumped $9 million of his own money into the failed bid.
The most recent Ye presidential campaign got off to a rocky start in May when British right-wing political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos proclaimed that he was the “director of political operations” for the “YE24” campaign; RS reported that Yiannopoulos — whom the Anti Defamation League has dubbed a “misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, transphobic troll” — is no longer on Ye’s political payroll. The magazine also reported that there were serious questions raised earlier this year about whether it was even legal to hire a foreign national to work in a decision-making role in an American political campaign.
An unnamed source also reportedly told the magazine that the unpredictable MC could change him mind, but that “there’s no plan to do that… there’s no campaign structure or anything along those lines in place,” dubbing chances of a possible reboot of the campaign as “beyond remote.”
At press time it did not appear as if Ye had commented on the report about his reportedly scotched bid.
