Cornel West announces running mate for independent US presidential bid

The independent presidential candidate Cornel West announced on Wednesday that Melina Abdullah would serve as his running mate, joining the former Harvard professor’s long-shot bid in the US presidential race.

Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, helped to form the LA chapter of the group Black Lives Matter, and West praised her as “one of the great freedom fighters of her generation”.

“I wanted somebody whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working peoples of all colors,” West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley on Wednesday. “And Melina has a history of longevity, of putting her heart, mind, soul and body in the struggle.”

Abdullah told Smiley that West’s offer took her by surprise, but she quickly accepted because of her belief in his “platform of truth, love and justice”.

“How can you not get behind that platform?” Abdullah said. “So I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy and just was excited to be able to share space with him.”

The news comes as West, an author and leftwing activist, continues his efforts to get on the ballot in every US state. West’s campaign said he had already secured ballot access in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, but some states require a running mate for independent candidates to get on the ballot. As part of his 50-state campaign, West announced in January that he would launch a new political party, called the Justice for All party, to help ease his path to ballot access in some states.

West has no path to victory, as national polls show his support languishing in the low single digits. A survey conducted last month by the Marquette Law School found that just 4% of likely US voters named West as their preferred candidate.

But West’s presence on the ballot in key battleground states could draw support away from Joe Biden, raising concerns among Democrats that the independent candidate might serve as a spoiler for the incumbent president.

According to a Quinnipiac University poll of US voters conducted last month, Biden leads Donald Trump by 3 points, 48% to 45%, in a head-to-head match-up, but the president’s support dipped down to 38% (compared with Trump’s 39%) when third-party candidates such as West, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein of the Green party were listed as options.

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“Cornel West and Jill Stein will each run from the extreme left and likely garner a paltry number of votes. Not all of their voters would support Biden, but none of them would support Trump,” Jonathan Cowan and Jim Kessler, leaders of the center-left thinktank Third Way, wrote in a USA Today op-ed last week.

“The lessons from 2016 and 2000 are clear: minor party does not mean minor impact. No-hope candidates can change the outcome of an election, even by garnering a relative handful of votes.”

West has previously dismissed concerns about how his presence on the ballot might boost Trump, arguing that he has a moral obligation to give a voice to progressives’ concerns in this election.

“I’ve got to be able to speak the truth no matter what. I’m planning to do that until the very end,” West said at a fundraising event in October. “So in that sense, who knows who’s stealing from who.”