Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign was once seen as a quixotic quest for a scion of a storied political family: an environmental warrior who most recently tarnished his family's name by aligning himself with a political party founded by a segregationist to thrive. the November elections in California.
But a combination of voter apathy toward President Biden and former President Trump, the presumptive candidates of both major parties, and the success of Kennedy's campaign The focus on ballot qualification rules across the country has sparked growing alarm among Democrats and Republicans alike.
“When there are extremely close elections, almost any candidate can be a spoiler,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “Now the interesting thing, unlike Jill Stein [a perennial Green Party candidate], it's not 100% clear which major party candidate it hurts the most. “This uncertainty is going to cause many changes in what the parties do… to keep it out of the elections.”
Kennedy, son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has no real chance of being elected to the White House in November. However, the Californian could be a spoiler in the race, tilting the vote. Two names are frequently mentioned: H. Ross Perot in the 1992 race and Ralph Nader in 2000, although there is debate about the extent to which their candidacies resulted in Bill Clinton and George W. Bush winning their respective elections.
Kennedy has qualified to appear on the ballots of three states, most recently California, and his campaign claims to have collected enough signatures to appear on the ballots of seven others, including Nevada.
In California, the American Independent Party filed paperwork for Kennedy to appear on the ballot as its standard-bearer, the candidate announced this week.
George Wallace, a segregationist governor of Alabama who opposed federal civil rights laws, helped found the party and ran for president in 1968. Kennedy's father, a strong supporter of civil rights, was assassinated. in Los Angeles during that campaign.
Leaders of the party, which currently exists only in California, say it has repudiated its segregationist roots and focuses on conservatism and the Constitution. In a video Kennedy posted Tuesday, he called Wallace a “bigot” who “was the antithesis of everything my father believed in.”
Traditional Democrats are incredulous at Kennedy's association with the party. When Wallace stood at the door of a University of Alabama school, trying to prevent two black students from registering, President Kennedy called in the Alabama National Guard at a time when his brother, Robert, was attorney general. of the nation.
Paul Mitchell, a veteran Democratic strategist, said he previously believed Kennedy had a chance of winning California based solely on his last name. That is no longer the case, based on how he has run his campaign and who he has chosen to partner with, Mitchell said.
“If I were a Kennedy and acted like a Kennedy and professional, I wouldn't put [a California victory] out of bounds,” said Mitchell, who noted that Kennedy became associated with the fringe party after gathering a negligible number of signatures for a political party he was trying to form. “He Now he is a crazy anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and runs a campaign like a crazy person. He is very embarrassing.”
Biden supporters have been concerned about Kennedy for some time. Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee created a team to oppose third-party candidates, primarily Kennedy. His first act was to file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing that Kennedy's campaign inappropriately coordinated with a Super PAC to qualify Kennedy for some states' ballots.
“We know this will be a close election and we're not going to take anything for granted,” said Matt Corridoni, a Democratic National Committee spokesman working on the effort against third parties, noting that the largest donor to a pro-Kennedy PAC coalition is a Trump megadonor and that a New York-based campaign official filed his candidacy arguing that Kennedy would help Trump defeat Biden.
In April, several members of the Kennedy family endorsed Biden, including Kerry Kennedy, the presidential candidate's sister.
“We want to make very clear our feeling that the best path forward for America is to re-elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” he said at a campaign event in Philadelphia.
On Wednesday, Kennedy challenged Biden to accept that whoever among them performed worst in a head-to-head poll in the fall would drop out of the race to prevent Trump from being elected to a second term.
But Republicans, including Trump, have recently expressed growing concern that Kennedy is undermining the former president's support.
“RFK Jr. is a Democrat 'plant', a radical left liberal who has been created to help corrupt Joe Biden, the worst president in the history of the United States, get re-elected,” Trump posted on Truth Social. on April 26, arguing that the candidate opposes gun rights and the military and supports raising taxes, open borders and radical environmental policy. “A vote for Junior would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, which could swing in either direction, but would only go against the Democrats if the Republicans knew the real story about him.”
Trump posted that before a Monmouth University poll released Monday found that after voters were told about Kennedy's vaccine skepticism, their views changed; Previous polls showed Kennedy getting equal support from Biden and Trump.
In the new poll, the percentage of Republicans who said they would support Kennedy nearly doubled to nearly one in five after learning his views on vaccines, while Democrats' support fell sharply to about 10%.
Kennedy has also been receiving attention in conservative media, such as Wednesday night on “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News Channel, where he argued that his campaign polls show him winning in a head-to-head matchup against either Biden or Trump.
But “if I'm in the race, in a three-way race, I lose because people vote out of fear, because they think that the other vote, a vote for me, will put someone they hate in office,” he said. saying. “But if I go toe-to-toe with any of them, I win.”
Trump's advisers are bothered that Kennedy receives attention from those media.
“For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone on a conservative platform would include people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who believes the NRA is a terrorist organization, whose positions on the environment are more radical than [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]and who believes in a 70% tax bracket,” said Chris LaCivita, chief strategist for the Trump campaign and chief of staff of the Republican National Committee.
“From our point of view, only one person is more liberal than Joe Biden and that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” LaCivita said, adding that Kennedy “is a blank canvas and we are going to fill it with paint.”
