Kennedy Could Play the Spoiler—If He Can Even Get On the Ballot

The Democrats don’t want Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot. In early March, the Kennedy campaign announced that volunteers had collected over 15,000 signatures for the candidate’s name to appear in the voting booths of the swing state of Nevada. Later that month, Cisco Aguilar, the state’s Democratic secretary of state, threw cold water on the campaign’s excitement by rejecting the campaign’s signatures for having failed to include a running mate on the candidacy petition. 

Kennedy’s campaign staff reacted with frustration, claiming that the “Kennedy campaign intends to depose the Secretary of State to find out exactly which White House or DNC official concocted this scheme.” 

The campaign’s ballot access attorney, Paul Rossi, insisted in a press release, “The DNC Goon Squad and their lackeys in the Nevada Secretary of State’s office are outright inventing a new requirement for the petition with zero legal basis.”

Most recently, the campaign announced Friday that it submitted a second round of signatures for a spot on the ballot.

In the middle of a 20-day period during which the campaign announced it had gathered enough signatures in Nevada and Aguilar announced that their petition was insufficient, NBC News reported that the Democratic National Committee had been building a legal and communications infrastructure to weaken third-party candidates. Pat Dennis, president of a Democratic opposition research group called American Bridge 21st Century, told NBC, “We see [Kennedy and No Labels] essentially as an arm of the Trump campaign and we intend to treat it as such.”

Despite the pending litigation, the campaign continues to include the state in its running list of 27 states in which it has collected the necessary number of signatures for ballot placement. 

The campaign also includes the states of Illinois, New Jersey, and New York and the swing states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania on the list of states in which it has collected the necessary number of signatures, even as the campaign finds itself in active litigation or disputes with state Democratic committees in each of those states.

Whether Kennedy will make it on the ballot in Indiana is also up in the air. The campaign’s press office has mentioned the state twice this year, once to confirm that volunteers were collecting signatures in the state in late March and once to lament that Indiana law “permits county clerks the unilateral authority to prevent otherwise valid ballot access petition signatures from being filed with the Secretary of State by simply failing to validate petition signatures in time.” 

While the state of Indiana’s deadline for independent candidates to file a petition of nomination with a county voter registration office for the verification of petition signatures was on Monday, the state will further require the same candidates to file a petition of nomination with the state after county verification on Monday, July 15. One June 21 report indicates that county officials certified about 5,400 signatures of the 36,943 required. Because of the campaign’s relative silence regarding its status in the state amid a passed deadline, Kennedy’s sustained claim that he will appear on the ballot in all 50 states is now open to question. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Regardless of whether the campaign fulfills its desire to land on the ballot in every state across the country, how its candidate fares during Election Month is the determining factor. And right now, the response from swing state voters is largely uniform. In Kennedy’s most hotly contested state, Nevada, the former President Donald Trump holds almost a 4-point lead over President Joe Biden, while Kennedy attracts about 8 percent of the state’s electorate, according to an average of last month’s polls. 

In North Carolina, Trump has secured a 7-point lead over Biden, while Kennedy has captured about 7 percent of the state. In Arizona, Trump leads by 5, and Kennedy has about 8 percent. In Georgia, Trump leads by almost 7 percent, and Kennedy has almost 7 percent. Voters polled in Wisconsin have been more discerning, giving Trump a slight edge over Biden and awarding Kennedy about 6 percent. Pennsylvania voters offer Trump almost a 2-point lead and Kennedy squeaks out about 5 percent. In Michigan, Trump holds the same 2-point lead and Kennedy pulls almost 7 percent. 

The aggregates of these polls have Trump winning in each swing state. What’s worth noting is that Biden took a marginal lead over Trump in three discrete polls last month in the swing states: One each in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Each of those polls asked voters to choose between Trump and Biden in a head-to-head matchup. On the other hand, Trump wins every swing state poll when Kennedy and his third-party competitors are included in the calculus. 

But things have changed on the national scene even since these poll numbers were collected, and the DNC is scrambling for a chance to beat the betting markets. Some have floated the independent candidate’s name as a solution to the Democrats’ sorry position. With Kennedy, though, they appear to have made their position known. 

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