Jill Stein enlisted to help build Cornel West’s third-party presidential campaign
(CNN) — Two-time Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein has taken an interim role assisting Cornel West, the former Harvard professor and longtime progressive activist, as he builds up his recently announced campaign for the White House, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Posted — Updated“She is helping him transition to the Green Party as he is building his team,” a source close to both West and Stein said Thursday. On Wednesday night, Stein described herself as the nascent campaign’s “interim coordinator” in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Stein and aides did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
Stein is not currently expected to have a long-term presence on West’s campaign. But her involvement will likely rankle Democrats who say her candidacy siphoned progressive votes from Hillary Clinton during the 2016 general election. In the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Stein’s vote total exceeded Donald Trump’s narrow victory margins. It remains unclear whether Stein voters would have turned out for Clinton had the Green nominee not been on the ballot.
Stein also ran on the Green Party line in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected.
West, a prominent surrogate for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during his two presidential campaigns, announced his own plans to run as a candidate with the little-known People’s Party in a video earlier this month. But he quickly broke off from that group, which has limited infrastructure and concerns about ballot access, to join the Greens and seek their nomination.
“When it comes to infrastructure and institution, it’s much broader and deeper. Access to the ballot, much broader,” West said on the “The Katie Halper Show” earlier this month. “But in the end, as you know, any candidacy to run the empire, in order to dismantle the empire, has to be part of a movement.”
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