The Daily - R.F.K. Jr.’s Battle to Get on the Ballot

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tries to get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, he’s confronting fierce resistance from his opponents.Rebecca Davis O’Brien, who covers campaign finance and money in U.S. elections for The New York Times, discusses the high-stakes battle playing out behind the scenes.Guest: Rebecca Davis O’Brien, a reporter covering campaign finance and money in U.S. elections for The New York Times.Background reading: Surprise tactics and legal threats: inside R.F.K. Jr.’s ballot access fight.Here’s where third-party and independent candidates are on the ballot.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tries to get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, he's confronting fierce resistance from his rivals. My colleague, Rebecca Davis O'Brien, has been reporting on the high-stakes battle playing out behind the scenes. It's Monday, May 6th. Rebecca, when we last spoke with you, which was in the fall, about what's really become your beat these days, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign,

he had just made this very important decision to drop out of the Democratic primary, which he decided he couldn't win, and run as an independent, but very much unresolved at that moment was whether as an independent candidate without the infrastructure of a major party, he could really mount a serious campaign. So what has happened since then? Right. So you might remember that when Kennedy began his campaign. I've come here today to announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.

to announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. Back in April of 2023, he was really sort of a protest candidate. They close every business in this country for a year. Who was still really within the Democratic Party, but was pointing out, as he had been during the pandemic, some of the problems with the pandemic response. As we all now recognize, the COVID vaccines were neither safe nor effective. His skepticism of the COVID vaccine, his skepticism about childhood vaccination schedules. I can make the argument that President Biden

is a much worse threat to democracy. His dissatisfaction with how President Biden had done his job, but it was really more of a niche audience. And when he left the Democratic Party and decided to run as an independent in October, he had to create a bigger audience for himself, a bigger platform, and stake out kind of a broader claim on the American electorate. And how did he do that? Well, you could hear it immediately in his speech back in October. I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate.

When he was saying, I declare my independence, I hope to be at the forefront of a movement of the independent voter in the United States. This country is ready for a history-making change. The broad thrust of his argument is that the current political system dominated by the Republican and the Democratic Party is no longer working for Americans. We've seen both the Democratic and the Republican Party turn against the values that they traditionally represented for our country.

And so many of us feel homeless today. So he started that really in October. And since then, he's been taking this message of declaring independence for himself and trying to scoop up, draw in as many voters from across the country who also, like him, feel disaffected or not represented by either the Democratic or Republican parties that he sees as a kind of corrupt, stale duopoly. Let's go take back our country. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. So Kennedy's very much taking this identity, it sounds like, as an independent,

which was in a way a political necessity, and he's turning it into an animating identity for his campaign and one that he hopes will be appealing to people across the political spectrum, not just independents, but Democrats and Republicans. That's exactly right. And part of that effort is staying in the news cycle and staying relevant. So we saw that earlier this year when there was this big $7 million ad paid for by a Super PAC supporting Kennedy. $7 million? $7 million. A huge expenditure on a single ad.

A huge expenditure for a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl. And what was interesting about this ad and caught a lot of viewers' attention... Do you want a man for president whose season through and through... ...was that it was a repurposed presidential campaign ad from 1960 for John F. Kennedy, who was, of course, his uncle. Right. And who's old enough to know... And young enough to do... Right. And they kind of swapped out some of the images in there that had been of JFK's face.

Right, and he used the famous jingle that I think all of us know, even if we weren't born in the 1960s, which is the Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. I'm glad you sang that. American Party 2024 is responsible for the content of this advertisement. The ad was successful in generating a lot of news coverage and keeping Kennedy in the news for another few days after the Super Bowl. At the time, the head of the Super PAC that bought it explained that the idea behind it was to get more people to realize that he was still running for president. Which it did. It did. Right. And he follows that ad up a month later with the announcement of his vice presidential running mate. And she is a pretty unknown figure. She is a Silicon Valley lawyer and investor. Her name is Nicole Shanahan. And why does he pick her? Well, in addition to sharing some of his political views, he picks her because she has a lot of money.

She used to be married to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. Some estimates out there are that she's worth billions of dollars, and she can help fund this campaign. Hmm. that a legal effort, a signature-gathering effort, all these things that have to happen and which cost a lot of money start to really come together. And that's happening as he's making this big public splash. Okay, so how does it go trying to get actually on the ballot? So let me just start by saying getting on the ballot is a state-by-state scramble. And critical to these efforts in basically every state is getting thousands of signatures. If you're an independent candidate,

you have to get, in some cases, tens of thousands of signatures from voters under very specific circumstances. Each state has its own specific rules for gathering signatures. Deadlines. Deadlines. And there are certain windows you can use to gather signatures. There are rules about who can gather the signatures and where. So it's very complicated and time-consuming and expensive process. But here is where Kennedy has had success so far. He got on the ballot in Utah. He got on the ballot in Hawaii. And a big moment happened a few weeks ago when he announced that he was on the ballot in Hawaii. And a big moment happened a few weeks ago when he announced that he was on the ballot in Michigan.

And Michigan really matters because it's a critical swing state in this election. It went for Trump in 2016. It went for Biden in 2020. And both of the campaigns see this as a must win for their success this fall. this fall. And so for the Biden and Trump campaigns, Kennedy getting on the ballot in Michigan is the moment when they see the threat of a spoiler, because all of a sudden they see that even if he doesn't win, if he's able to draw enough voters from either of them to tip the balance in the favor of the other, that kind of margin could really make an impact on the whole election. Right. And RFK, if we're being honest, is unlikely to tip the scales in the two previous

states you mentioned, Utah and Hawaii. Utah is a bright red state. Hawaii is a bright blue state. Michigan would be the place where if he were going to play the spoiler, he would play the spoiler. Right. And the story of how he got on the ballot in Michigan is kind of a fascinating one. Please tell us. So rather than go through this whole on the ballot in Michigan is kind of a fascinating one. Please tell us. So rather than go through this whole arduous process of gathering thousands of signatures, the campaign found a kind of backdoor to getting on the ballot line through a very obscure party called the Natural Law Party. Never heard of it? It is essentially a two-member party based only in Michigan, sustained truly by this guy who has a small law firm an hour west of Detroit. He is the chairman of the Natural Law Party. And back in January,

he happened to be watching TV and saw RFK, and he thought to himself, now that's a guy who would be a natural candidate for the Natural Law Party. The Natural Law Party has kind of a varied platform that includes supporting transcendental meditation and environmental stewardship. And the very next day, he got an email from the Kennedy campaign's ballot access director expressing interest in being the party's nominee. And fast forward to April, he is having a two-person convention in his offices an hour west of Detroit, and they nominate Kennedy to be the natural law party candidate. Okay, I just want to make sure I have this all correct. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets onto the ballot in this key swing state of Michigan by a convention of two people in a law office, and that's it. That's it. That's the back door.

That's the back door. No signatures, no fuss. And Michigan's really a watershed moment for Kennedy and for the rest of the political establishment because it's the moment when his candidacy goes from being an abstract threat to a concrete one. His candidacy goes from being an abstract threat to a concrete one. So as Kennedy tries to replicate that success across the rest of the country and get on other states' ballots, the Republican and Democratic parties realize that they have to deal with him. There's no avoiding him. And so Kennedy's effort to get on the ballot in every state is turning into a pitched battle. We'll be right back. So, Rebecca, tell us about what's becoming a pitched battle

over RFK Jr.'s access to the ballot. And I'm curious which of the two parties, Democrats or Republicans, seems to be fighting him the hardest. The Democratic Party has definitely come out of the gates with the most aggressive concern about Kennedy's candidacy. And why is that? Well, I think the answer to that is that third party and independent candidates have haunted the Democratic Party in presidential cycles in recent years. There's sort of the ghost of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein lurking there. Ralph Nader, of course, more than 30,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2016. And that was widely seen as part of the reason why Hillary Clinton fell short there.

So this is the fear, basically, of Kennedy as spoiler for the Democrats. Right. This is the fear that Kennedy could get just enough votes to tip the election in swing states to Donald Trump. So that's the broad underlying fear. There's a specific fear here, which is that the Democratic Party sees that Donald Trump's support has a high floor, right? It's going to be very hard to peel voters away from the hardcore Trump base. On the other hand, Biden has a sort of softer base of support. There's an enthusiasm sort of deficit there, especially among young voters. And the concern is that a third-party candidate could draw people away from the margins from him, especially in swing states. And Michigan in particular is a pressure point for the Democrats and Biden because we saw during the Democratic primary there, there was a protest vote stemming from disaffection over his handling

of the Israel-Gaza war. Right. And it was a historic rebuke of Biden from what had been traditionally a Democratic base, Arab Americans in Michigan. Right. He and his campaign saw the potential for a portion of his base to kind of go rogue and not vote for him. So Michigan encapsulates why RFK poses a threat to Biden, because the Democratic base right now is sort of restive. And in the mind of the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party, they want to keep this election about Donald Trump versus Joe Biden. They don't want there to be an opportunity for Democratic voters to take

somebody else's box, especially not at Kennedy, not only in Michigan, but in all these other swing states in Georgia, in North Carolina, in Nevada, in Arizona. Every single person whose name is not Joe Biden or Donald Trump is a risk for Joe Biden in the mind of the Democratic Party. Right. And the reason the Kennedy name is a specific threat is it's the most powerful name, perhaps besides Clinton, in the history of a Democratic Party. Right. And even though he's not a Democrat up and down his policy platforms, he has a lot of positions that would probably appeal to Democrats. So he's pro-choice, he's pro-union, and he has a long history of supporting environmental stewardship. Okay, so what is Biden and the Democratic Party doing to try to fend off what they clearly see as a threat of RFK Jr. getting on all of these swing state ballots and really all the ballots around the country?

Right. So heading into this tentacles all over the states. And they have been monitoring aggressively the ballot access efforts as they kind of emerge state by state. So, for example, one thing that emerged late last year is that a super PAC backing Kennedy pledged to spend up to $15 million to help him get on the ballot in some critical swing states. And immediately, the Democratic Party went into action and filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying, you can't do that, that's coordination. So they immediately jumped— A legal coordination between the campaign and a super PAC. Right. So a super PAC, which can raise unlimited amounts of money and spend it at will, they're not supposed to coordinate with the campaign. And the argument of the Democratic Party was there is literally no way that a super PAC

could help a candidate get on the ballot without coordination that's illegal. And indeed, that super PAC, having announced that it had gotten enough signatures in a number of swing states, then backed off that effort publicly. So a successful legal intervention by the Democrats. So far, yes, it seems so. So that's a successful legal intervention on a national level. But we've also seen pushback against the Kennedy campaign from Democratic secretaries of state and elections officials in a number of states. So in Nevada, for example, earlier this year, they signed a petition and gathered more than 15,000 signatures to get him on the ballot as an independent. And then the Secretary of State, who is a Democrat, said, it looks like you might have done this wrong. And of course, the Kennedy campaign cried foul. They're threatening legal action. And that is likely to play out in federal court sometime soon. But clearly, this is the kind of thing that the Biden campaign and the

Democrats nationally would encourage local Democrats to do on their behalf. Right, exactly. I mean, even without the explicit pressure from the Democratic Party, this is exactly what they're hoping will happen, is that Democratic secretaries of state and these elections officials will push back against efforts to get on the ballot that are maybe not coloring within the lines strictly by the letter of the law. So it sounds like from the top of the Democratic Party all the way down to local Democratic officials, everyone who can find a lever of power that would throw a wrench in RFK Jr.'s ballot access is doing so. And I'm curious how much of that feels like kind of the standard playbook

that a major party uses in a presidential race and how much stands out as unusually aggressive. The Democratic Party would say they're just enforcing the rules and that, you know, local officials are doing their job. But, of course, the Kennedy campaign sees this as a profoundly anti-democratic exercise and example of, like, how the party is trying resorting to tactics like we saw in Michigan, where, as you just told us, they get on the ballot using this obscure party with two members. The Kennedy folks, in their minds, are waging kind of electoral guerrilla warfare to get around these roadblocks that the Democrats are putting up.

That's right. Okay,blocks that the Democrats are putting up. That's right. Okay, so that's the Democrats. What are the Republicans and former President Trump doing about RFK Jr.'s efforts to get on the ballot? You had told us that Democrats are the more aggressive party in trying to combat Kennedy's candidacy, but how are the Republicans thinking about the role that he might play in this presidential race? So the Republican Party and Donald Trump have been on an interesting journey with Kennedy since he became an independent candidate. On the one hand, on paper, you can actually see how a candidate like Kennedy poses a unique threat to Trump. He's sort of an anti-establishment voice.

He says what's on his mind, for better or worse. He's pro-gun rights. He's anti-vaccine. He speaks to a certain contrarian segment of the Republican base, actually. Right. Sounds a bit like Trump. Sounds a bit like Trump. And yet, over the past few months, the Republicans seem to have not been as concerned as you might expect. The Republican Party actually seemed to embrace Kennedy's candidacy for precisely the same reasons that the Democrats are so worried about him. They're looking at the same history of third-party candidates and saying, great, it will temper the votes for Joe Biden and pave the way for President Trump's reelection. And so various arms of the Republican party and Trump's campaign had devised various ways to help prop Kennedy up and paint him as a

liberal in an effort to draw voters away from Biden. So for example, some people aligned with the Trump campaign had floated the idea of using dark money groups to put up billboards in Michigan praising Kennedy's pro-choice stance as sort of a way to say like, oh, here's another liberal alternative, Michigan voters. And elsewhere, people who are aligned with the Trump campaign have publicly offered to help gather signatures for, yes, for the third party and independent candidates. And this is part of like a broad dark ops effort to prop up these candidates who both Democrats and Republicans have sort of thought would be more of a threat to Democrats. Right. So this is the philosophy that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thus, RFK Jr. as an enemy to Joe Biden

should be a friend to the Trump campaign. Exactly. But then, you know, as I said, this has been a journey. And in the past few days, we've seen sort of a reversal and sort of maybe Trump seeing Kennedy as a threat to his own candidacy. So on Truth Social, his social media platform, the other day, he described Kennedy as a Democrat plant who has been put in place to help Joe Biden win reelection. He said voting for, quote unquote, Junior would be a wasted protest vote. It was almost out of nowhere, this sort of broadside against Kennedy. why Trump has concluded that the previous thinking about Kennedy as potentially an ally and hurting Biden is no longer the right course. We don't know why. I mean, we can surmise that there have been internal polls that might have suggested that Kennedy can draw equally from Donald Trump. But the Kennedy folks are proud of this because they say that they do draw from both sides. And, you know, if you talk to Kennedy volunteers, some of this because they say that they do draw from both sides.

And, you know, if you talk to Kennedy volunteers, some of them have voted for Trump in the past. Interesting. So I do think we're going to likely see a rhetorical shift and sort of a changing posture towards Kennedy in particular, because now, evidently, Trump and the Republicans see his candidacy as a threat to them as well. It strikes me, Rebecca, that there's some real risk for both Biden and Trump in going after RFK Jr., whether that's through the legal tactics we've been talking about on the Democratic side and so far the rhetorical approach that the Republicans are taking, because Kennedy is casting himself as an alternative to the entrenched duopoly, to quote him, of these two big party machines. And so attacking him and specifically trying to keep him off the ballot might strongly reinforce that image and potentially galvanize support for him, right? When I speak to people inside the Kennedy campaign, they constantly marvel at two things.

One is that the Democratic Party repeatedly makes itself look profoundly undemocratic by, in their minds, sort of corruptly blocking their access to the ballot. And the other thing is that the Republican Party just seems to see them as a puppet, right? So these kinds of attacks from the Democrats and Republicans play right into his narrative about how he is rising above the two-party system. And he can now turn to these efforts and say, look, they're trying to keep me off the ballot in these states, and they're attacking me as super liberal, but they're also attacking me as super conservative. And he's

done exactly that. He sort of chuckles at them and says, this is why you should come with me, because I care about the American people and these two parties are too busy attacking me to do what they need to do, which is lead the country. So I think that as he continues to mount this ballot access state by state, the Republicans and the Democrats, especially as he sees more success, which I think will happen, they have to make a decision. Is it worth it for them financially or sort of in the big picture to make it so that voters can't vote for him or to make a case for why they shouldn't vote for him, right? I think that's sort of the crux here, right?

Is it like ballot access or is it about the issues? Right. Do Republicans and Democrats let voters choose Kennedy or do they say you have no choice? Right. And does depriving you of the choice to vote for Kennedy make him stronger?

Rebecca, thank you very much. Thank you. After we spoke with Rebecca, Kennedy got on the ballot in yet another state, California, by once again working with a little-known party. He is now on the ballot in four states. His campaign says he has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in six more. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

The latest round of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, held in Cairo, hit an impasse on Sunday that prompted the delegation from Hamas to leave the talks. Meanwhile… How dire is the humanitarian crisis on the ground right now in Gaza? What I can explain to you is that there is famine, full-blown famine in the north, and it's moving its way south. The leader of the United Nations World Food Program, Cindy McCain, said that parts of Gaza are experiencing a famine that is spreading across the territory because of the Israeli military operation occurring there. Finally, Israel said that it would shut down the Israeli operations of Al Jazeera, the Qatari-based TV network that is a major source of news in the Arab world

and has frequently highlighted civilian suffering in Gaza during the war. Israel accused Al Jazeera of harming its national security and inciting violence against its soldiers. In response, Al Jazeera called the shutdown order a criminal act. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Carlos Prieto, with help from Sydney Harper and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Will Reed and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Maggie Asterman. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.