When third-party ballot access meets partisan meddling: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior politics reporter Alex Seitz-Wald uncovers an effort by operatives linked to a GOP consulting firm to help put Cornel West on the ballot in a major battleground state. Plus, chief Washington correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell breaks down the state of the cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

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Operatives with GOP ties are helping Cornel West get on the ballot in a key state

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Cornel West’s independent presidential campaign is broke. His former campaign manager says he knows nothing about ballot access. And West spent more on graphic design than petition-gathering in his most recent campaign finance report.

But tens of thousands of signatures have been gathered on behalf of the famed left-wing academic in key states thanks to self-organized grassroots volunteers — and some help from outside operatives tied to a Republican consulting firm.

Democrats fear West’s potential to siphon votes from President Joe Biden in places where he is on the ballot in a close election, and some Republicans are publicly discussing ways to boost West and other minor candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Green Party’s Jill Stein in the hopes of splitting the anti-Donald Trump coalition.

In North Carolina, a new party formed in the state to get West on the ballot announced Monday that its “all-volunteer effort” had submitted more than 30,000 signatures, despite having