Rapper Kanye West announced Saturday – two weeks after announcing he was making a late bid for the presidency – that he would be holding his first campaign event in South Carolina.
The event will take place at the Exquis Even Center in North Charleston on Sunday at 5 p.m., giving potential attendees little time to plan, ABC News reported. The event is limited to “registered guests only,” and West provided a link to his campaign website – Kanye2020.country – where they can sign up, however, at the time he posted the link, there was no dedicated link to sign up for the event, ABC reported.
“According to a copy of the release shared with ABC News, all attendees will be asked to sign a COVID-19 liability release form, social distance and wear a mask. West will also be holding a pre-rally press event,” the outlet reported.
Earlier on Saturday, West tweeted an ask for people to sign his petition to get him on the ballot in South Carolina.
“It’s not entirely clear how West would qualify, as South Carolina’s deadline to file signatures as an independent candidate was July 15. The state does not allow write-in candidates,” ABC noted.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, West filed paperwork last week with the Federal Election Commission establishing a principal campaign committee called Kanye 2020. He filed the paperwork on the same day a former consultant who had been hired to get the rapper on the ballot in multiple states told New York Magazine’s Intelligencer that West was “out” of the presidential race.
Campaign specialist Steve Kramer told the outlet that West’s team was “working over weekend there, formalizing the FEC and other things that they’ve got to do when you have a lot of corporate lawyers involved.”
The Intelligencer reached out to West’s publicist, who added another spokesperson to the email chain. No one said anything for a while, so the Intelligencer reached back out to Kramer, who said simply, “He’s out.” When asked for details, Kramer told the outlet: “I’ll let you know what I know once I get all our stuff canceled. We had over 180 people out there today.”
That same day, West met the requirements to appear on Oklahoma’s presidential ballot, The Associated Press reported.
“A representative for West filed the necessary paperwork and paid the $35,000 filing Wednesday afternoon, which was the deadline for a spot on the state’s Nov. 3 presidential ballot, said Oklahoma Board of Elections spokeswoman Misha Mohr. He was one of three independent presidential candidates to pay the filing fee prior to the deadline, she added. The others were concert pianist Jade Simmons and cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brock Pierce,” the AP reported.
The outlet added that West has “missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in several states, and it’s unclear if he is willing or able to collect enough signatures required to qualify in others.”
Billboard reported that on Thursday, “West appeared to take the second important step to officially launch a White House run with the filing of an FEC Form 2 (Statement of Candidacy), which is filed once an individual has raised or spent more [than] $5,000 in campaign activity, triggering candidacy status under federal campaign finance law; that form, too, listed a Cody, Wyoming, address.”