The NPR Politics Podcast - Will Voters See RFK Jr. On The Ballot?

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

There is a movement to get third-party and independent presidential candidates on the ballot this year as many Americans have expressed frustration about a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump. But for independent presidential candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it's a costly uphill battle.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and voting correspondent Miles Parks. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Nick. I'm currently enjoying the high-speed rail as I travel from the Netherlands to Belgium while on my last spring break of undergrad. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 13th of 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be waiting for the day we can use high-speed rail to travel back at home in the United States. Okay, here's the show. I was going to say, enjoy that spring break, because you then grow up and realize you don't get spring break.

I know. I kind of miss it, right? You get that urge in March, and you're like, I just, I don't really feel like doing anything right now, you know? Well, hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Miles Parks. I also cover voting. And independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Yes, indeed. A nephew to the very famous John F. Kennedy, who was once a president of the United States. He is fighting to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states for the general

election. So on today's show, we'll talk about the challenges of independent candidates getting on ballots in states across the country and the effect those additional candidates could have on the general election results. Ashley, I want to begin with you because you've been doing some reporting on this. And this election cycle, there is a movement to get third party and independent candidates on the ballot, especially because a lot of American voters are not particularly thrilled to look at a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But it seems like it's not so easy if you're an independent to get on the ballot. Yeah, that's right. And I mean, I will say it's kind of complicated, but Kennedy is mostly running as an independent candidate, although he's trying to run as a third party candidate in some states to sort of like get through some of the tougher laws for independent candidates in some states because it's easier as a minor party.

And that's like a whole other bag of grass. But I will say, like, this is an especially tough thing if you're like Kennedy and you want to get on the ballot in all 50 states, mostly I'll say as an independent candidate. And, you know, that's because in order to get on a state's ballot, for those who don't know, is you have to gather signatures from voters in each and every state that you want to be on their ballot. And that every state has different quotas and timelines. So it's a very like complicated and tough process. And the Kennedy campaign has told me that they're aiming to get about a million signatures across the U.S. Some of that is factoring in the fact that a lot of signatures submitted in any campaign, whether it's a ballot measure or a candidate, don't get approved by the state for many different reasons. Ashley, this is a dumb question, but do major party candidates

have to do this too and we just don't hear about it? Or is this only independent or third party candidates that actually have to do this sort of signature gathering to get on the ballots? Well, we have many reasons for why we have a two party system, but this is one of those big reasons. You know, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and to some extent, the Libertarian Party, and in some cases, the Green Party are locked into having a spot on a ballot no matter what in all 50 states. But that is not true if you're running independent. There's not like, you know, a little space waiting for everyone on, you know, for an independent candidate on a ballot. So you have to petition a state to get on there. So, you know, this is one way in which the two parties, Republican Party and the Democratic Party, have an easier time getting on a ballot. It's like

there's a slot waiting for them. And a lot of that is because they've just been running campaigns in the United States for a long time. And something like the Libertarian Party or other minor parties don't have that history. Before we get real deep in this podcast, Miles, I do think it's important to remind folks who exactly Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is. He, of course, does come from this very well-known American political dynasty. I would say he's rather different than some of his more well-known Democratic politician relatives. But, you know, I think how some folks might have gotten introduced to him was through this ad that aired during this year's Super Bowl. So can you remind us who exactly he is? Yeah, I mean, I would say people may not be super familiar with them if they're not super familiar with conspiracy theories, because that is honestly the way that his brand has been built over the last 20 years in American society.

He has pushed all sorts of different conspiracy theories. NPR's Shannon Bond did a really big, deep dive on all the different things he's pushed over the years. And I would encourage people to go look at that. But, I mean, it's any number of things. Chemicals in the water are turning kids transgender. But the big one is vaccines. He has spent a lot of his life fighting for this idea that vaccines cause more injury than they actually help. And obviously, the pandemic amplified a lot of those concerns, which then had this effect, I think, of amplifying Kennedy's prominence in America.

Actually, I want to go back to this issue of getting on the ballot, because it is presumably going to cost millions of dollars. And even if Kennedy comes from a rather wealthy family, I don't know that he is like independently wealthy enough to do this. But my sense is that he has financial backing from a super PAC of some sort. Can you explain how he is attempting to get on the ballot in all 50 states? Well, the campaign itself is spending a lot of money on this, right? So the campaign says they're going to spend about $15 million on ballot access. And I should say the reason this costs so much is that gathering signatures, especially if you're doing this in states across the country simultaneously, like I mentioned, is going to require you to hire people. You know, besides lawyers, which, by the way, suing states to get on the ballot and getting

sued is like a surprisingly big part of all this. Campaigns also have to hire these paid signature gatherers, which can be pretty expensive. I mean, depending on the market, it can cost a campaign something like $15 a signature, which can really add up if you need a million of those. And I talked to the Kennedy campaign's manager about this. Her name is Amaryllis Kennedy. She's actually Kennedy's daughter-in-law. And she told me that they want to rely as much as possible on volunteers to gather signatures, but they already have some paid staff on their payroll. And I'm really happy to say that we're exceeding our milestones. And we have lots of backup with paid petitioners that, you know, of course, can be parachuted into triage where they're needed.

But we're thrilled at the efforts that our volunteers have put in. And so far, they are exceeding every benchmark that we set for them. So our hope is that we won't need as many paid petitioners as we had expected. You mentioned already they're getting a lot of help from a super PAC for all this, and that includes on ballot access stuff. That super PAC plans to spend millions of dollars on helping him get on the ballot in about a dozen states. And, of course, the super PAC doesn't have volunteers, so they're paying only for paid signature gatherers to do this work. And just to be really clear, there are campaign finance laws on the book that specify campaigns and super PACs cannot work together. And so this is legally not allowed.

So how are they trying to navigate this all? You know, that's the that's a great question. And I should say the Democratic National Committee has already filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission about this because they think you cannot do this work without coordinating in some sense. Like this is the sort of basics of a campaign is ballot access. So like, how is it that the Super PAC can do this sort of independent of the campaign? I talked to one of the co-founders of the Super PAC. He's this man named Tony Lyons who runs like a small publishing company that is kind of known for giving book deals to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, for example, and Kennedy. And he thinks that sort of like pearl clutching about a super PAC doing this work is kind of hypocritical because this is something

that Democrats do themselves. So they talk about how much money we've raised and the people who have donated money to us, but they've gotten something like 15 times the amount of money in their super PACs that all the super PACs that support Bobby Kennedy combined have raised. So they have this incredible war chest. They have the power of the presidency. But I mean, I do think like this whole relationship is one of the open questions that this campaign raises is like, what role a super PAC should be playing in here. And I mean, this will ultimately be up to courts and possibly the FEC. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, though, I am a little sympathetic to the campaign. That's like this idea that you're kind of looking under

couch cushions to be able to make this happen. I was blown away, Ashley, at the amount of signatures needed in some of these states. Like California, you need 219,000 signatures. That's more signatures than Democrats who voted in the New Hampshire primary. There are a lot of average voters who are open to the idea of third party or independent candidates. And I think they'd be pretty upset if they found out that it was that difficult to end up on a ballot in California. Yeah. You know, I live in Texas, so it could be that I always find Texas interesting. But like in Texas, you need half as many as that, like 100,000, which is also nothing to sneer at. But you can only get it from voters who haven't voted in the primary this year. And you have to get it within like a couple of months, like you have from like

right now to May. So it's like really difficult, depending what state you're in to get this done. So you do need to like kind of spend a lot of money to do it. All right. We're going to talk more about the politics of this all, but let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. Hi, I'm Casey Morello, producer on the show, and I'm here with a quick plug for our most recent bonus episode. It's a look back at the 1976 race for the Republican presidential nomination. President Ford today started scrambling for a new strategy to protect him from Ronald Reagan. We had a pretty bitter contest, and it was head to head, knock down, drag out of there.

It was a fight that helped reshape the GOP into a conservative party. Available now for NPR Politics Podcast Plus listeners. If that's not you, it could be. You get bonus episodes, sponsor-free listening, and you help support our work. To sign up, just go to plus.npr.org today, and thanks. And we're back. And I want to dive deep now into the politics of what an independent and third party candidate on the ballot could mean, because I have heard this concern from pretty much every Democratic source that I've talked to. They are very worried about what this could mean for Joe Biden's reelection bid. You know, Miles, there is a perception in American politics that third party candidates are spoiler candidates. And I think people think that if they look back to, say, the 2000

presidential election or even the 2016 election. Is that the case? I feel like both Ashley and I, being Floridians, were kind of triggered by you bringing that up. But yes, I mean, I think that is the time. I think a lot of people in modern politics think about when they think about spoiler candidates. In 2000, for instance, in Florida, you know, George Bush won Florida by just a few hundred votes. Ralph Nader, whose values aligned very closely with the Democratic Party, won almost 100,000 votes in Florida in 2000. And so pretty reasonable to assume that Nader probably did have an impact on that election. More recently, right, you can point to 2016, Hillary Clinton, you covered that. I did. And I think so much postmortem analysis. I know how much were those people talking about Jill Stein afterward, right? In a state like Wisconsin,

where I believe that Hillary Clinton lost the state of Wisconsin by fewer votes than Jill Stein got. Right. And so the the argument the Democrats had is if Jill Stein were not running on the Green Party ticket, Hillary Clinton could have potentially won that state. And that's why Democrats are real nervous. Can you drill down on that a little bit more, Asma? Like you are in touch with a lot of Democrats involved in the Biden campaign. How worried are they about specifically about Kennedy's campaign for president. You know, it's interesting. I think that there are like degrees of worry, depending on who you talk to. But some of the more, I think, clear eyed Democrats I've talked to are aware of the fact that if you look at the percent that Donald Trump got in 2016, and the percentage of the vote he got in 2020, it's really not that different. I think it was around 46 percent in 2016. In 2020, it was 46.9 percent. And so the difference, they'll say, is that the Democrat did a lot better. And they would argue that's because of third party candidates.

And I do think that amongst, again, kind of clear eyed Democrats, they realize there is a frustration that some Democratic base voters have with Joe Biden on a range of policies right now. And so, you know, they are very worried, I think, about specific states. I've heard some concern about whether or not Kennedy might be on the ballot in a place like Georgia and Arizona. And I want to ask you about that, Ashley, because someone I talked to the other day said that Kennedy suggested he would get on the ballot in those states. Those states were both won by very slim margins. And then you look at a state like Wisconsin that's always had a bit more, I think, of a progressive bent to its Democratic Party politics. The Green Party does have some allure there. And so if you have someone like Jill Stein on the ballot in Wisconsin, there's that memory that Democrats have of what happened in 2016.

And that does make some veteran Democrats nervous. Yeah, I will say the Kennedy campaign is like fully prepared and anticipating a lot of lawsuits, not just from Democrats, but also Republicans because of this. And they are setting aside not just money for lawyers, but like, you know, the Kennedy campaign told me they're like holding on to ballot signatures, you know, until the 11th hour, right until the deadline, just so that they don't get lawsuits and blocked from turning in those petitions. So like the reality of like what this means for the major parties is like very clear to the campaign. And they're like fully, from my understanding, like fully preparing for it. Have you heard a concern from Republicans as well about Kennedy potentially

being on the ballot? Because it does seem like some of his, let's say, unconventional ideas might track more with some conservative voters. Well, you know, I haven't heard anything from Republicans, but I will say, like, I did do some research and see if, like, there were Republicans who have also worried about this being a quote unquote spoiler campaign. And sort of early on when Kennedy announced he was running, there were Republicans who called it that. And the Republican National Committee even said as much. So I think both parties are kind of unclear what effect this will have. But I think like lawsuits are sort of inevitable because you don't want a wild card in a close election. You really don't. Yeah, I will add that like it does feel I kind of agree with you, Asima, that while Kennedy started out as a Democrat, I feel like,

I mean, he spends a lot of time on Fox News and his ideas around vaccines. And also the other thing that tracks really closely to some Republican messaging is he talks a lot about censorship, that the kind of mainstream media and mainstream society is censoring him. And that's a big part of his campaign is that he's going to end the campaignoring him. And that's a big part of his campaign is that he's going to end the campaign of censorship. And so I think both those ideas, to me, do track pretty closely with how Republicans talk about some of these issues. So it is really hard. Whereas with Jill Stein, it is pretty clear that her policies, like you said, Asma, really veer closely to some of the more progressive Democratic parties. I think it's

really hard at this point to plot out how a Kennedy campaign would affect some of these battleground states. Yeah. And Kennedy has been courting libertarian voters. He went to their convention expressly seeking their support. And the Libertarian Party definitely does have overlap with the Republican Party. Ashley, we're talking about this long process to get on the ballot. But one question I have been asking some of my sources, too, is, well, when will you know in a particular state like Arizona if Kennedy will actually be on the ballot? And do you have a sense of that? When will we know if he's actually on the ballot? Not so much in all 50 states, but I'm particularly curious about these six key battleground states that both Republicans and Democrats are going to be paying attention to.

I mean, we should know by the end of the summer. So first of all, something like almost 30 states have their deadlines for their petitions in August alone, which again is why they have to do a lot of this simultaneously. So we should get a good sense of like how good they're doing in a chunk of the country. You know, a place like Texas, for example, has a deadline kind of earlier in May. But like I mentioned, because of lawsuits, we just like the anticipation of lawsuits, even like this could be slowed down a little bit, like we really won't know. But I mean, you'll get a sense of how well the campaign is doing in terms of like how many petitions they submit, you know, by the by the end of the summer. So by the fall, we'll get a sense of how many folks are actually running for president of the United States this year.

All right. Well, that is today's show. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. And I'm Miles Parks. I also cover voting. And again, thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.