Rapper Kanye West's campaign website says "our future is waiting on us," but even with a big nudge from voters in Minnesota, it might have to wait until 2024.
Rapper Kanye West racks up his second-highest vote total in Minnesota
November 11, 2020 at 9:37PM
The musical artist folded his 2020 presidential campaign with some 60,000 votes across the nation, at least 7,654 of them coming from Minnesota, a state with a tradition of backing third-party insurgencies like that of former Gov. Jesse Ventura.
Minnesota gave West his second-largest statewide vote total after Tennessee, where more than 10,200 fans voted for the first-time candidate.
While some saw West as a Trump campaign stand-in to siphon off votes from Joe Biden, the entertainer's tally didn't come close to salvaging Minnesota for President Donald Trump, who lost the state by about 234,000 votes.
Still, the Christian-infused rapper, once an avowed Trump backer, made a bigger splash in Minnesota than he did in all but one of the 12 states where he managed to get on the ballot.
When West announced his White House bid in July, DFL Party leaders noted that he seemed to be getting a lot of help from Republican figures in states such as Wisconsin, Colorado and Minnesota, which was then seen as a potential battleground that Trump had vowed to win.
Among those who worked on the 43-year-old rapper's unsuccessful effort to get on the ballot in Wisconsin was Twin Cities attorney Erick Kaardal, a former official in the Minnesota Republican Party.
Until West announced his candidacy as a "Birthday Party" candidate on July 4, his most high-profile brush with politics had been an extended rant he gave during a 2018 White House visit with Trump.
On Election Day, West, whose hits include "Stronger" and "Gold Digger," shared photos and videos casting what he called his very first vote.
"God is so good. Today I am voting for the first time in my life for the President of the United States, and it's for someone I truly trust … me," West said in a tweet.
Only three precincts in Minnesota gave West more than 20 votes: a precinct in Minneapolis' Near North and Folwell neighborhoods, and one in St. Paul's North End.
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West lagged behind Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen, who received nearly than 35,000 votes in Minnesota, and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, who received just over 10,000 votes in the state. More Minnesotans chose to write in various people and characters this election than vote for West, with a total of nearly 10,000 write-in votes.
In the wee hours on Nov. 4, when it was clear that West would not win the presidential election, he tweeted a photo of himself in front of an electoral map with the words "KANYE 2024."
Meanwhile his wife, reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian West, who has hinted that her husband has mental health problems, shared photos and videos of Biden and Kamala Harris following their presidential win. She has not publicly said whom she voted for.
Zoë Jackson covers young and new voters at the Star Tribune through the Report For America program, supported by the Minneapolis Foundation. 612-673-7112 • @zoemjack
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