Academic and activist Dr. Cornel West confirmed on Monday that he will run for the presidency under the banner of the People’s Party.
West posted a video on Twitter on June 5 explaining his decision to enter the presidential race on a third-party bid.
I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself – fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for… pic.twitter.com/u3NYGUbG1S
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 5, 2023
“I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself,” West commented in his post.
West listed his campaign focuses as ending poverty, putting a stop to mass incarceration, guaranteeing housing, and stopping war. He also criticized President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump as well as both political parties these presidential candidates represent.
“Neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech,” West claimed in the video.
West is making his bid under the party founded by Nick Brana, a former staffer for Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2016 presidential campaign.
West supported Sanders during his 2016 and 2020 presidential bids, but Sanders has backed Biden in the 2024 election, according to CNN.
The People’s Party endorsed West’s bid on its website, which describes its mission as “building a major new independent party that will guarantee health care, housing, quality education, and peace to all.”
Alongside his activism, West taught at institutions such as Yale, Princeton, and Harvard before becoming the professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 2021.
There has been speculation that Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) might also enter the presidential race on a third-party bid, according to USA Today.
In several interviews conducted lately with news outlets like Fox News and NBC’s Meet The Press, Manchin criticized both the Republican and Democratic parties for allegedly going too far to the right and to the left, respectively. He bemoaned Americans’ absence of choice amid this “extremism.”
No Labels, a political organization aiming to give a voice to “America’s commonsense majority,” per its website, is laying the groundwork to nominate a ticket to the White House by raising money and planning a convention.
Holly Page, the senior strategic advisor at No Labels, said in late May that it is still months away from choosing a candidate but spoke favorably of Manchin.
“I’ve never been in a room or a conversation with him where he doesn’t talk about the people he represents,” Page noted, according to WV MetroNews.
While it remains to be seen whether any other third-party candidates with an eye on the presidency will join West, the GOP presidential race continues to heat up, as The Dallas Express has covered.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum all announced their candidacies this week. They join previously announced candidates including Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and radio host Larry Elder.