EGN NEWS DESK
The unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has emerged as a wild card of the 2024 election, attracting a motley mixture of ideologically numerous 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 turned an environmental lawyer, most well-known for suing company polluters in an effort to wash up the Hudson Valley watershed.
In the previous 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 security of Covid vaccines and the official narratives of the virus’s origins.
With the centrist group No Labels asserting on April 4 that it will not run a presidential ticket, Mr. Kennedy is essentially the most distinguished unbiased or third-party presence within the 2024 race. Here’s what to learn about him, his supporters and the way President Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s campaigns are approaching him.
What party is R.F.Okay. Jr. affiliated with?
Mr. Kennedy is operating as an unbiased, so he isn’t affiliated with a longtime political party — he isn’t even, technically talking, a “third-party candidate.” In holding along 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 party’s nomination. Six months later, he introduced that he would run as an unbiased, saying the Democrats had corruptly blocked his efforts.
He has flirted with the Libertarian Party, which is on the poll in about three dozen states. If he have 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 party, We the People, to assist him safe poll entry in a couple of states: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi and North Carolina.
Does R.F.Okay. Jr. pose an even bigger risk to Biden or to Trump?
That that is such a typical query — and that each 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. Still, it’s exhausting to discern whether or not he would draw extra voters in a common election from Mr. Trump or from Mr. Biden.
How nervous is the Biden marketing campaign about R.F.Okay. Jr.? The Trump marketing campaign?
Democrats have been haunted by third-party candidates since 2000, when Ralph Nader, operating with the Green Party, was partly blamed for costing Al Gore the election. In 2016, Jill Stein — additionally with the Green Party — gained 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 significantly acute this 12 months, with polls suggesting that Mr. Trump’s base of enthusiastic assist is sturdier than Mr. Biden’s. Conventional knowledge inside the party is that any vote not for Mr. Biden advantages Mr. Trump, and there are considerations that giving folks extra decisions on the poll — particularly one with the final title Kennedy — is extra more likely to harm Mr. Biden, particularly in crucial swing states. The party is taking aggressive measures to counter his candidacy.
Where 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 functions to state officers.
His marketing campaign is gathering signatures in most different states. The timeframe to take action in some locations, like Colorado and Louisiana, is narrower and has not began but.
Each state has completely different guidelines for poll entry, they usually range relying on whether or not a candidate is an unbiased or with a 3rd party. Almost the entire guidelines revolve, finally, 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 tens of millions of {dollars}, by most estimates, together with the price of litigating challenges to poll functions.
Who is his operating mate?
Mr. Kennedy has named Nicole Shanahan, a Bay Area lawyer and investor, as his operating 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 has already proven her willingness to supply monetary assist 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 Super Bowl advert that one of many PACs purchased.
Ms. Shanahan has aligned herself with points and positions which can be vital to Mr. Kennedy, and which have animated his marketing campaign and his core followers, together with skepticism of vaccines, considerations about persistent illness, disaffection with the Democratic Party and environmental stewardship.
Who is R.F.Okay. Jr. common with?
Mr. Kennedy’s supporters fall into a couple of overlapping classes. First, there are individuals who have supported his work with Children’s Health Defense — an activist group primarily recognized for spreading anti-vaccine disinformation.
More broadly, he has ardent, longtime supporters within the so-called medical freedom motion, which pulls a cross part of political opinions (together with these of Libertarians and people who find themselves distrustful of mainstream medication) via its opposition to vaccination necessities and public well being measures.
More just lately, his outspoken criticism of the federal government’s dealing with of the pandemic — together with skepticism concerning the Covid vaccines, broadsides towards prime 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.
Some 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, despite the fact that most members of his household have publicly disavowed his candidacy.
Mr. Kennedy has additionally drawn assist 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 international 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.
