Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has for months ignored complaints that he will simply play spoiler to a presidential rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Kennedy, who is running as an independent after a short run in the Democratic primary, even accused Biden of handing the race to Trump by refusing to bow out. He held a highly publicized press conference on Wednesday where he urged the president to sign a “no spoiler pledge” in which the “weakest” candidate promises to drop out.
“Ultimately, I think what we all want in this election is that Americans not have to feel like they have to vote out of fear, that they feel they can vote out of hope,” Kennedy told a crowd in New York. “That is only going to happen if there is a two-way race between me and President Trump or me and President Biden.”
The press conference reflected an attempt by Kennedy, who polls in the double digits but lags far behind Biden, to flip the narrative against him on its head. But the response by the Biden and Trump camps reflects the growing worry that despite being a long-shot candidate, he will swing the election in an unpredictable way.
The Democratic National Committee attempted to tie Kennedy to “MAGA Republicans” following the press conference, while the Trump camp released its latest round of opposition research.
Polling does not necessarily provide a clear picture of the electoral dynamic. A Quinnipiac University Poll published this week found, for example, that Biden and Trump had 37% support apiece, with Kennedy pulling 16% of the hypothetical vote.
The survey appeared to show Kennedy siphoning more votes away from Trump.
“Twenty-nine percent of people who said they would vote for Kennedy when given the choice, had earlier said they would vote for Biden,” Mark Bouchard, the Quinnipiac University Poll’s associate director of survey operations, told the Washington Examiner. “Forty-seven percent of people who said they would vote for Kennedy when given the choice, had earlier said they would vote for Trump.”
Kennedy’s impact on Trump, however, was counteracted by the effect of Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Cornel West, another high-profile independent, on Biden.
Democrats are not willing to take any chances and adopted an assertive posture toward Kennedy after he announced last October that he was no longer running as a Democrat and his outside group, American Values 2024, bought an ad during this year’s Super Bowl for $7 million.
The DNC, operating as part of the Biden campaign, for instance, stood up a dedicated team responsible for responding to Kennedy and other third-party candidates, both rhetorically and legally. It even released an NFT last month to undercut Kennedy’s keynote address at ETHDenver, a Web3 innovation confab.
Biden and his aides have also recruited Kennedy’s family, with 15 members, including six of his 11 siblings, endorsing the president in Pennsylvania in April after more attended the White House‘s St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in March.
“Biden understands the threat and so will work to remind voters of Kennedy’s anti-vaxxing statements, which are more likely to resonate with conservative voters,” Brookings Institution’s Darrell West, author of the book Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power, told the Washington Examiner. “If they are successful, Kennedy could pull as many voters from Trump as Biden.”
In the last month, the DNC and outside groups, such as American Bridge 21st Century, have capitalized on a lack of clarity regarding Kennedy’s abortion position, in addition to his comments about Jan. 6 and democracy.
“RFK Jr. was recruited to run by MAGA Republicans, his candidacy is being propped up by Trump’s largest donor, and a campaign staffer recently admitted that the campaign’s top goal is stopping President Biden,” DNC spokesman Matthew Corridoni told reporters after Wednesday’s press conference. “With ‘friends’ like these being there for him, it’s no wonder that RFK Jr. has said he would sign a national abortion ban and would consider pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists.”
“The American people deserve to know the truth — RFK Jr. is a spoiler for Donald Trump,” Corridoni said.
Third Way spokeswoman Kate deGruyter, whose liberal-leaning organization had been concentrating on countering the No Labels campaign before it imploded last month, told the Washington Examiner that Democrats are concerned about Kennedy and other third-party candidates because “it takes a very small segment of the electorate in the right places to tilt the race to Donald Trump.”
“It remains to be seen whether he can get on the ballot in the places that will decide the election,” deGruyter said of Kennedy. “If a lot of those voters are located in Maricopa County, that makes a much bigger difference than if they’re located in Utah or California,” she added of the critical county in Arizona that is anchored by Phoenix.
To that end, the Kennedy campaign confirmed this week that he would be on California’s ballot after he was nominated by the American Independent Party of California, as well as that of Michigan and Utah. Kennedy’s team also claims to have the number of petition signatures needed for seven other states’ ballots: Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.
In the battleground state of Michigan, Kennedy averages 8.6% support to Trump’s 41%, Biden’s 40.8%, Stein’s 1.8%, and West’s 1.3%, according to RealClearPolitics‘ polling aggregation. Without third-party candidates, Trump has 46% of the vote to Biden’s 44.8%.
Trump and his Republican allies have only recently become harder on Kennedy, but with less coordination than Democrats.
Last weekend, Trump described Kennedy as being “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat,” acknowledging Kennedy as an issue for his campaign and complementing the “Radical F***ing Kennedy” website that super PAC MAGA Inc. launched last month.
“Let’s look at RFK Jr’s record: he admires Bernie Sanders, opposes voter ID, loves the Green New Deal, hates fracking, and promotes a 70 percent income tax rate,” MAGA Inc. told reporters last weekend.
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Hours after Kennedy’s press conference, the group sent reporters another email with its latest opposition research dump on Kennedy, a 2005 environmental speech during which he told the audience, “Red state people are more likely to murder you, to impregnate your teenage daughter, to commit a violent crime against you.”
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hates you,” MAGA Inc. wrote.
