“When people get disenfranchised, they get pissed off,” Mapstead said. “That’s how we ended up with [Black Lives Matter] and January 6. We have to unrig the system before this boils over.” But the party wouldn’t pick its nominee for another three months, and the interest it was getting from other two-party alternatives was intriguing.

Kennedy won a single vote in Sunday’s straw poll, and 94 delegates picked someone else. Twenty-four of them backed Lars Mapstead, the ponytailed co-founder of FriendFinder networks, with none of Kennedy’s problematic support for environmental regulation or redistributive taxes. Mapstead enjoyed every minute of his panel with West, bonding with him over their desire for peace and their anger at a “rigged” system.

https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/02/27/2024/the-heated-competition-to-be-americas-next-top-protest-vote