Donald Trump has said he would be “honoured” by an endorsement from Robert F Kennedy Jr amid expectations the third-party candidate would end a presidential campaign that threatened to siphon votes from the Republican nominee and his rival Kamala Harris.
Kennedy has fallen in the polls since Harris took US President Joe Biden’s place on the Democratic ticket, and his idiosyncratic campaign has essentially run out of money.
“If he endorsed me, I would be honoured by it,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “RFK would be the biggest thing.”
Kennedy — a member of the Democratic dynasty that included his father, Robert F Kennedy, and uncle, former president John F Kennedy — has announced plans to speak about his “path forward” on Friday from Phoenix, the capital of swing state Arizona. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally two hours later in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb.
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, said on a podcast on Tuesday that their campaign had two options: stay in the race or “walk away right now, and joint forces” with Trump. She added that continuing their bid would boost Harris because more of Kennedy’s backers were potential Trump voters.
Kennedy is now polling at 4.7 per cent, far behind Harris’s 47 per cent and Trump’s 43.7 per cent, according to a FiveThirtyEight average. Kennedy was polling at 8.6 per cent immediately before Biden dropped out, having had double-digit support as recently as early July.
Kennedy was considered a bigger threat to Biden than he is to Harris now, with the Democratic National Committee for the first time setting up a team dedicated to quashing third-party candidates.
“We were very worried about Kennedy from the beginning because of his name” and its appeal to low-engagement voters, said Matt Bennett, executive vice-president for public affairs at Democratic think-tank Third Way. “That threat is now passed” with Biden out, he said, adding that Third Way’s coalition was “happy” about Kennedy’s expected exit.
It remains unclear whether Kennedy’s backers would shift their allegiance to Trump, vote for Harris instead, or stay home on election day.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll, released on Saturday, showed that Trump had a slight edge, with 35 per cent of Kennedy supporters saying they would vote for the former president and 34 per cent saying they would back Harris in a head-to-head match-up.
But Harris has gained ground among Kennedy backers: in July, 48 per cent of them said they would vote for Trump compared with 23 per cent for the vice-president.
Kennedy has created his political brand around being an anti-establishment candidate and is best known for his anti-vaccine positions. The environmental lawyer and cryptocurrency proponent pitched himself as a “spoiler” for “the war machine . . . for Wall Street and Big Ag, and Big Tech, and Big Telecom and Big Pharma, and the corporate-owned media and all the corrupt politicians and corporations”.
He is a known conspiracy theorist — including peddling claims that the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination — posing the risk that a closer relationship between him and Trump could alienate moderate voters.
His long-shot campaign has been punctuated by bizarre moments. In May, Kennedy said neurologists had found a dead worm in his brain that had eaten part of the organ. Earlier this month, he admitted to having dumped a dead bear in the middle of Manhattan’s Central Park almost 10 years ago.
Kennedy managed to get his name on the ballot in 24 states, even as court filings related to his unsuccessful battle to get on the ballot in New York revealed that he keeps unconventional pets, including ravens, falcons and an emu.
Kennedy was bankrolled primarily by billionaire Tim Mellon, a scion of the prominent US banking family, and Shanahan, a lawyer and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Mellon, who has given $115mn to a pro-Trump super Pac, contributed $25mn to a fundraising group for Kennedy. Shanahan gave $15mn but asked for some money back as their campaign fizzled.
The Kennedy campaign raised $5.6mn but spent $7.3mn in July, according to a federal filing. It had $3.9mn cash on hand at the end of the month but owed $3.5mn in debts for security and travel.
Several independent candidates have tried to break the grip Democrats, Republicans and their affiliates have had on the presidency since Millard Fillmore, a member of the Whig party, held office from 1850 to 1853. Despite their historical lack of success, they can still influence elections by peeling away votes from one of the major party candidates, potentially tipping the scales in tight contests.
After Theodore Roosevelt’s run with the Bull Moose Party in 1912, Ross Perot had the most successful independent presidential campaign in US history, taking on Democrat Bill Clinton and incumbent Republican George HW Bush in 1992. Perot won no states but drew almost 19 per cent of the popular vote and is considered consequential to Clinton’s victory.
Many Democrats blame Green Party candidates Ralph Nader and Jill Stein for contributing to Al Gore and Hillary Clinton’s losses in 2000 and 2016, respectively. Kennedy, Stein, Cornel West and Chase Oliver are the third-party candidates left standing in the 2024 race.
Rahna Epting, executive director of progressive grassroots organisation MoveOn, warned that Democrats “cannot ignore the lessons of 2020 [and] 2016” because “this race will be won or lost on the margins”.
West and Stein “remain intent on presenting on the ballot in key battleground states,” she said, and “they can also help swing the election in favour of Donald Trump”.
Additional reporting by Alex Rogers in Chicago
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