Chicago mayoral candidate Amara Enyia stopped by The Breakfast Club the day before the election to discuss her plans on how to make the city better, and her connection to Kanye West, who made two separate donations to her campaign last year totaling around $200,000.
“He said he was thinking about coming back to Chicago,” Enyia says of Kanye at the 3:40 mark. “He wanted to give back to the city. He’s from the South Side, so he’s a native son, and when he was having conversations with folks as he was thinking about moving back that my name kept coming up.”
One of the people who probably brought up Enyia to West was Chance the Rapper. Back in October, Chance held a press conference where he announced his endorsement of Enyia for mayor of Chicago. Given how close ‘Ye and Chance were getting while in their hometown around that time, it would make sense that Amara’s name would be mentioned as a means of making The Chi a better place.
“I’ve been doing a lot of organizing work for years in the city, so he said he wanted to meet and talk about what we could do in Chicago,” Enyia recalls. “We met for the first time, and there was no talk about endorsement or support. It was all just talking about—he had this limitless vision about what could happen. It was actually really refreshing.”
Of course, whenever politics and Mr. West are brought up, his public backing of Donald Trump is a topic that isn’t too far behind. However, when speaking with him about Trump, Kanye reassured her that he no longer supports Trump’s views.
“I asked him about the whole Trump thing because there was some controversy over, you know, what was going on with Donald Trump,” she said. “But he told me he doesn’t support Trump’s views. He said I don’t support his views, but I believe that your platform, and your message, and who you are is what Chicago needs.”
Their discussions led to Kanye making two donations to her campaign. The first amount of $73,540 was used to cover fines in connection to failing to close a previous campaign account following her exit from a prior mayoral race. West later made a second contribution of $126,460.
