A mystery emerged Wednesday during arguments about former Harvard University professor Cornel West’s eligibility for Maine’s presidential ballot.

Who hired the people who collected signatures that were presented to the state to qualify West as a third-party candidate? And why did they go to the trouble and expense?

Former Harvard professor Cornel West speaks in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2019. Elise Amendola/Associated Press

West campaign officials said they did not pay anyone to collect signatures here. They also were not aware of any outside group doing so and said they didn’t receive signature-gathering services as an in-kind campaign contribution.

But state Rep. Grayson Lookner, D-Portland, told the Press Herald on Thursday that he was among the people paid to collect signatures for West by an outside group, National Ballot Access. And he said he stopped circulating the petition after learning that it could be linked to Republican efforts to siphon support for Democrats by boosting third-party candidates in an effort to put Donald Trump back in the White House.

“I support what Cornel West stands for,” Lookner said of the progressive candidate. “We have ranked-choice voting in Maine, so I thought his name should appear on the ballot for a number of reasons, including his stance on Gaza. When I found out where the money was coming from, I didn’t feel comfortable and I stopped.”

Lookner said he didn’t have direct knowledge about who exactly was funding the petition effort, but he learned through national news reports that Trump supporters were boosting third-party candidates in an effort to siphon support from President Biden when he was still the presumptive Democratic nominee and locked in a tight reelection battle.

Because Maine will use ranked choice voting in the presidential election, there is no risk of a spoiler candidate affecting the outcome here.

Under the state’s voting process for the upcoming presidential race, voters can rank the candidates in order of preference. If a candidate gathers more than 50% of the first-choice votes, he or she will be declared the winner. But if no candidate gets a majority of the votes in the first round of counting, the last-place candidate is eliminated and that candidate’s supporters will have their votes redistributed based on their second choices. The process repeats until one candidate gets more than 50% of all votes.

Maine’s use of ranked choice voting eliminates the potential for anyone to win a race among three or more candidates with less than 50% of the vote. And it raises further questions about why outside groups would spend money in Maine as part of an apparent national effort to get West on the ballot to split the vote and sway the outcome.

While the effort appears to have been aimed at helping to unseat Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris has since replaced him as the Democratic nominee, a move that upended what had been a static presidential race that was a rematch of the 2020 election.

It’s not illegal for campaigns, or outside groups, to pay canvassers. But depending on the circumstances, such an expenditure might have to be disclosed as a campaign contribution.

WHO PAID IS UNCLEAR

The Associated Press reported last month about secretive groups and Republican donors funding ballot drives for West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who also qualified for Maine’s ballot. The AP reviewed government emails indicating that Blitz Canvassing, a Republican firm paid millions by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, was paid to conduct signature drives in North Carolina, though it couldn’t figure out who provided the funding.

The mystery around who paid for the West petition drive in Maine came up Wednesday, when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows held a hearing on two separate challenges to West’s candidacy here.

West’s campaign manager, Ceyanna Dent, said Wednesday that the campaign didn’t pay anyone to circulate petitions in Maine, nor did it work with any third parties that hire petitioners. But she admitted that it’s possible a third party hired people without the campaign’s knowledge.

“I’m not sure that there is a correlation between the decentralized nature of our process and the ability for third parties to support an independent campaign, but I think it is also true to say, yes, due to the decentralized nature of our petition gathering process that that is possible,” Dent said.

Matt Warner, an attorney representing two people challenging West’s ballot eligibility, read a list of eight people, including Lookner, who collected signatures for West and had registered with the state as paid petition circulators for previous state ballot and referendum campaigns.

One of those individuals, Patrick Powers, owns New England Petitioning, LLC, a Massachusetts firm that hires people to circulate petitions for state referendums and ballot questions. A phone number for New England Petitioning was not in service Thursday.

CAMPAIGN DENIES INVOLVEMENT

Alex Coronado, the organizing director for the West campaign, said he was not familiar with any of the people listed – nor was he aware of any outside groups funding petition efforts in other states.

“I’m not aware of any in particular,” Coronado said. “I’m definitely not aware of anyone that’s paying anyone to do this work.”

Warner could not be reached on Thursday to discuss the significance of the evidence he presented about paid signature gatherers, or why he spent so much time exploring the issue when it was not one of the substantive challenges to West’s eligibility for Maine’s ballot.

The challengers seeking to disqualify West argued that circulators turned in too many signatures in violation of state law, listed thousands of signatures that should have been deemed invalid and fell short of the number needed to qualify for the ballot.

They also said people were deceived when signing the petition. Several witnesses on Wednesday said they were told the petition was to ban stock trading by federal officials and that circulators never mentioned West.

The challenges appear to be part of a nationwide effort by Clear Choice Action, a group led by Biden allies, to prevent a third-party spoiler in what is expected to be a very tight presidential race. The Washington Post reported that the group planned to “develop research and push storylines in the media” to discourage people from voting for third-party candidates.

Attorneys for West and the challengers are expected to file closing arguments in writing by 5 p.m. on Friday. Bellows will have five business days to render a decision, which could be appealed to Superior Court.