PHOENIX \u2014 Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who struggled to gain traction as a third-party insurgent, said he would suspend his long-shot White House bid Friday, withdraw from battleground states\u2019 ballots and endorse Republican nominee Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Kennedy announced that he would suspend his campaign with several caveats, after several turbulent months of declining polling numbers, accumulating debt and reemerging controversies from his past. He said he would no longer campaign in critical states and withdraw his name from the ballot, but he would remain as an option for blue and red states to ensure he doesn\u2019t spoil the election. Kennedy blamed the two-party system and unfair media coverage when explaining his decision to a room of reporters and hardcore supporters gathered Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an honest system, I believe I would have won the election,\u201d he said. \u201cIn my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path for electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy, who appeared to wipe away tears, gave an emotional speech. He said he expected his name to be on the ballot in \u201cmost\u201d states, but he said polling \u201cshowed that by standing on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the most existential issues \u2014 censorship, war and chronic disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
His partial departure concludes what had initially appeared to be one of the most promising third-party presidential bids in modern history that had drawn disaffected voters to the scion of one of America\u2019s most beloved Democratic families. But the bizarre, quixotic campaign was attacked by both major political parties, which feared that Kennedy could pull from their bases. It faced other major challenges and hiccups, as well.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s decision comes after days of speculation that he would step aside. In the past several weeks, Kennedy spoke with Trump about potentially supporting him and sought a conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris about a role in her possible future administration, a move the Democratic campaign rebuffed. Days ago, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, publicly floated the idea of his departure from the race. And Trump, who once called him \u201cthe most radical left candidate,\u201d has praised him in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just had a very nice endorsement from RFK,\u201d Trump said at a campaign event Friday in Las Vegas. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be talking about that \u2026 great guy, respected by everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy \u2014 the nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of former attorney general and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy \u2014 worked as an environmental lawyer but captured the attention of voters with his anti-vaccine crusade. Members of his famous, extended family forcefully opposed his candidacy, while the Democratic establishment sought to keep him off the ballot in multiple states, challenging his claim of New York residency as well as voter signatures.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, 70, cast himself as an alternative to Trump, 78, and President Joe Biden, 81, as many voters expressed dismay with the prospect of a rerun of the 2020 race. The race shifted dramatically with Biden\u2019s July 21 decision to abandon his reelection bid, and Vice President Kamala Harris unifying the party around her nomination.<\/p>\n
While Kennedy had appeared to pull voters from both Biden and Trump earlier in the year, garnering at one point an average of about 15 percent of the vote, his support diminished in the late summer, hovering around 5 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight\u2019s polling average. After Biden stepped aside and endorsed Harris, polling began to show that Harris performed better when Kennedy and other third-party candidates were included. Shanahan indicated in a recent interview that the campaign did not want to contribute to a Harris win and take voters from Trump.<\/p>\n
Democrats, however, calculated that Kennedy\u2019s departure would have little impact on the race. Ramsey Reid, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee who has been helping to lead the charge against Kennedy, said in a memo Friday morning that Kennedy\u2019s remaining support in public polls is small and roughly divided between likely Harris and likely Trump voters, if he leaves the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce around 15 percent, RFK Jr.\u2019s support has been in free fall \u2014 now under 5 percent \u2014 and he\u2019s not positioned to deliver any electoral benefit to Trump,\u201d Reid wrote in the memo.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s campaign withdrew its petition for ballot access in Arizona, and an attorney for the campaign filed a notice in Pennsylvania that Kennedy would withdraw there. However, in Michigan, election officials said that minor parties can no longer withdraw candidates. Election officials in other states \u2014 including Nevada, North Carolina, Utah and Colorado \u2014 said they have not received a request from the campaign or his political party to take his name off the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy name will remain on the ballot in most states,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cIf you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states, the same will apply.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy had spoken with Trump about endorsing his campaign and taking a job in a second Trump administration, overseeing a portfolio of health and medical issues, The Washington Post previously reported.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, who gained national attention during the coronavirus pandemic for his vocal criticism of vaccines and public health measures, attracted a devout following through his media appearances among young people skeptical of the establishment. Many of his early supporters were double haters \u2014 people who did not want to vote for Trump or Biden \u2014 and Kennedy seized on the unpopularity of the two major party candidates, attacking them both.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we elect the current candidates, we\u2019re going to get more of the same,\u201d he said in campaigning. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get more debt. These two administrations ran up $8 trillion each. And we\u2019re going to get more wars. We\u2019re going to get more division, more anger, more hatred, more polarization.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Kennedy focused more of his attacks on Democrats. He suggested that Biden was a greater threat to democracy than Trump, and he increasingly took more right-leaning positions on issues. He said he was open to pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, and he reversed his position on abortion, saying it \u201cshould be legal up until a certain number of weeks, and restricted thereafter\u201d after confusion about his beliefs. He was also frequently attacked by Democrats for having the support of Republican megadonor Timothy Mellon.<\/p>\n
More than a dozen of his family members \u2014 including siblings \u2014 endorsed Biden in April this year.<\/p>\n
Kennedy, who had spent decades suing corporate polluters, also faced backlash from the environmental community, including former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who put out full-page ads against him.<\/p>\n
He also faced several controversies during his campaign, including stories resurfacing from his past, such as the time he had discarded a dead bear cub in Central Park a decade ago, and that he was accused by his children\u2019s nanny of sexual assault. The revelation that he had discovered in 2010 that a worm that entered his brain and then died attracted significant attention.<\/p>\n
And he apologized last month when his son posted a video on social media of his father speaking on the phone with Trump during the Republican National Convention. He said he was \u201cmortified\u201d of the leaked video after Trump was heard agreeing with Kennedy\u2019s discredited sentiments about vaccines and telling Kennedy that \u201cwe\u2019re going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d Kennedy replied.<\/p>\n
Kennedy had first announced his candidacy as a Democrat during the primary in April last year, but he said that he was leaving the party in October for an independent bid.<\/p>\n
Kennedy faced major legal hurdles to get on states\u2019 ballots, spending millions of dollars to challenge rules that varied state by state. Toward the end of his campaign, Kennedy had largely avoided public, in-person events, with his last one in Freeport, Maine, on July 9. He continued to employ a strategy of appearing on podcasts and online events.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
PHOENIX \u2014 Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who struggled to gain traction as a third-party insurgent, said he would suspend his long-shot White House bid Friday, withdraw from battleground states\u2019 ballots and endorse Republican nominee Donald Trump. Kennedy announced that he would suspend his campaign with several caveats, after several turbulent months of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}