The impartial presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has emerged as a wild card of the 2024 election, attracting a motley mixture of ideologically various supporters, elevating piles of money and drawing authorized assaults from Democrats and verbal barrages from former President Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Kennedy, 70, the son of Robert F. Kennedy and an inheritor to an American political dynasty, had a troubled youth and younger maturity marked by drug abuse. He grew to become an environmental lawyer, most well-known for suing company polluters in an effort to scrub up the Hudson Valley watershed.
Previously decade, he has turn into a distinguished voice within the anti-vaccine motion, selling falsehoods and conspiracy theories concerning the dangers of childhood vaccinations and different public well being measures. That work gave him a big platform through the coronavirus pandemic, when he questioned the protection of Covid vaccines and the official narratives of the virus’s origins.
With the centrist group No Labels saying on April 4 that it could not run a presidential ticket, Mr. Kennedy is essentially the most distinguished impartial or third-party presence within the 2024 race. Right here’s what to learn about him, his supporters and the way President Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s campaigns are approaching him.
What social gathering is R.F.Ok. Jr. affiliated with?
Mr. Kennedy is working as an impartial, so he isn’t affiliated with a longtime political social gathering — he isn’t even, technically talking, a “third-party candidate.” In step with his household’s political legacy, Mr. Kennedy was a lifelong Democrat, and when he entered the race in April 2023, he sought to problem Mr. Biden for the social gathering’s nomination. Six months later, he introduced that he would run as an impartial, saying the Democrats had corruptly blocked his efforts.
He has flirted with the Libertarian Social gathering, which is on the poll in about three dozen states. If he had been to affix its ticket, his efforts to get on states’ ballots would turn into a lot less complicated.
His supporters have created a brand new social gathering, We the Folks, to assist him safe poll entry in just a few states: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi and North Carolina.
Does R.F.Ok. Jr. pose an even bigger menace to Biden or to Trump?
That that is such a typical query — and that either side are involved about it — displays what a political enigma Mr. Kennedy has turn into and the vary of people that have been drawn to his candidacy. Nonetheless, it’s laborious to discern whether or not he would draw extra voters in a common election from Mr. Trump or from Mr. Biden.
How anxious is the Biden marketing campaign about R.F.Ok. Jr.? The Trump marketing campaign?
Democrats have been haunted by third-party candidates since 2000, when Ralph Nader, working with the Inexperienced Social gathering, was partly blamed for costing Al Gore the election. In 2016, Jill Stein — additionally with the Inexperienced Social gathering — received greater than 30,000 votes in Wisconsin, greater than Mr. Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton in that state.
Fears amongst Democrats are notably acute this 12 months, with polls suggesting that Mr. Trump’s base of enthusiastic help is sturdier than Mr. Biden’s. Standard knowledge inside the social gathering is that any vote not for Mr. Biden advantages Mr. Trump, and there are issues that giving folks extra decisions on the poll — particularly one with the final identify Kennedy — is extra prone to harm Mr. Biden, particularly in vital swing states. The social gathering is taking aggressive measures to counter his candidacy.
The place is Kennedy on the poll?
As of early April, Mr. Kennedy is formally on the poll in a single state: Utah. His marketing campaign says he has sufficient signatures to get on the poll in Hawaii, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina, however he nonetheless has to submit these signatures in purposes to state officers.
His marketing campaign is gathering signatures in most different states. The time-frame to take action in some locations, like Colorado and Louisiana, is narrower and has not began but.
Every state has totally different guidelines for poll entry, and so they range relying on whether or not a candidate is an impartial or with a 3rd social gathering. Nearly the entire guidelines revolve, in the end, round signatures: Candidates and events have a sure window of time to assemble tens of 1000’s of signatures, which should be submitted for approval by state authorities. And signatures take time, labor and cash — tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, by most estimates, together with the price of litigating challenges to poll purposes.
Who’s his working mate?
Mr. Kennedy has named Nicole Shanahan, a Bay Space lawyer and investor, as his working mate. Ms. Shanahan, who was as soon as married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is a political newcomer, having by no means sought or held public workplace.
Ms. Shanahan, 38, does have a historical past of political giving — she gave to Mr. Biden’s 2020 marketing campaign. And she or he has already proven her willingness to offer monetary help to Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign: She has given greater than $4.5 million to tremendous PACs backing him, together with the majority of the funding for a Tremendous Bowl advert that one of many PACs purchased.
Ms. Shanahan has aligned herself with points and positions which are essential to Mr. Kennedy, and which have animated his marketing campaign and his core followers, together with skepticism of vaccines, issues about persistent illness, disaffection with the Democratic Social gathering and environmental stewardship.
Who’s R.F.Ok. Jr. in style with?
Mr. Kennedy’s supporters fall into just a few overlapping classes. First, there are individuals who have supported his work with Youngsters’s Well being Protection — an activist group primarily recognized for spreading anti-vaccine disinformation.
Extra broadly, he has ardent, longtime supporters within the so-called medical freedom motion, which attracts a cross part of political opinions (together with these of Libertarians and people who find themselves distrustful of mainstream medication) by means of its opposition to vaccination necessities and public well being measures.
Extra just lately, his outspoken criticism of the federal government’s dealing with of the pandemic — together with skepticism concerning the Covid vaccines, broadsides towards high public well being officers like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, and his protests of lockdowns and monitoring of disinformation — have drawn new supporters from throughout the political spectrum.
A few of his supporters are longtime Democrats drawn to the Kennedy luster — Mr. Kennedy has anchored his marketing campaign in a mythmaking nostalgia for his household, although most members of his household have publicly disavowed his candidacy.
Mr. Kennedy has additionally drawn help from Libertarians and independents who’re broadly distrustful of the federal authorities — he expresses views that align with these of many Trump supporters, together with an isolationist overseas coverage and outrage over purported censorship within the information media and on tech platforms. He has turn into recognized for confrontational, provocative interviews on right-leaning podcasts, and has a form of iconoclastic anti-establishment vibe that has appealed to disaffected Democrats and Republicans.
