Philadelphia voters woke up to new digital ads Friday morning calling out Gov. Josh Shapiro for blocking Black political activist Cornel West from the ballot in Pennsylvania.
The well-known author and political philosopher known as “Brother West” is running for president as a progressive alternative to the two major parties.
“Our aim is and will always be to unite in solidarity with movements of truth and justice, who seek a choice beyond empire, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and the confines of the corporate-dominated two-party system,” according to the CornelWest2024.com website.
But Keystone State voters won’t have a chance to cast their vote for this candidate, and the Fair Election Fund, a national election integrity watchdog group, released a new ad targeting Shapiro and Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt for their role in keeping West off the ballot.
“Shapiro and Schmidt would delay printing ballots for a spelling error. But they refuse when it comes to including West — a candidate who qualified fair and square — on the ballot,” the ad states. “Their motive is clear. They’re afraid they’ll lose. So they’re silencing us. Disenfranchising black voters.
“Tell Shaprio and Schmidt to protect black voting rights.”
The group tells DVJournal they’ve got a five-figure buy behind the ad in Harrisburg and Philadelphia.
“Josh Shapiro and Al Schmidt’s actions prove they don’t care about democracy,” said former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a senior advisor to the Fair Election Fund. “They are doing everything they can to keep Cornel West off the ballot because they know he is a threat to the flailing candidacy of Kamala Harris.”
The involvement of Republicans like Collins in the (reportedly) $5 million effort to get West on the ballot in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina has Democrats crying foul, claiming it’s a partisan effort to help Donald Trump. They point to Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein’s presence on the ballot in 2016, when Trump won narrow victories in swing states with margins smaller than the vote total for Stein. In another close election, progressives who vote for West could cost Harris just enough votes to give Trump the win.
But officials like Shapiro and Schmidt are supposed to promote democracy, not protect the Democratic nominee, critics say. And the federal judge who rejected West’s attempt to be included on the Pennsylvania ballot last week expressed “serious concerns” about how Schmidt treated the Black activist’s candidacy.
“The laws, as applied to him and based on the record before the court, appear to be designed to restrict ballot access to him (and other non-major political candidates) for reasons that are not entirely weighty or tailored, and thus appear to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution,” U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan wrote.
Unfortunately, Ranjan ruled, there simply wasn’t enough time to change the ballots.
This isn’t the first time Fair Election Fund has run ads attempting to pressure state officials into allowing ballot access for West. Earlier this year, five Democrats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled to block West from the ballot. The group ran a paid media campaign targeting the justices as they ruled to deny West’s appeal for ballot access after he was removed from the ballot by Commonwealth Court Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer last month.
During an Oct. 7 hearing before Ranjan, West argued the two-party system was denying voters the right to support candidates that represented ideas those in power fear.
“This is about equal protection of voices. It’s very difficult for the citizens to gain access to a variety of different voices,” West said. And he urged the judge to do the right thing.
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
