KENNEDY DECIDES TO RUN AS INDEPENDENT
Candidate leaves Democratic primary contest for president
In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Kennedy, a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, said he represented “a populist movement that defies left-right division.”
“The Democrats are frightened that I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m going to spoil it for Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”
Since announcing his candidacy in April, Kennedy, 69, has been a sharp critic of Democratic leadership, which he has accused of “hijacking the party machinery” to stifle his challenge to President Joe Biden. He has also said, in interviews and in public appearances, that the party has abandoned its principles and become corrupted.
Running as an independent will entail an expensive, uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Last week, Cornel West, a liberal academic and presidential candidate, said he would run as an independent, abandoning his efforts to secure the Green Party’s nomination.
In a 45-minute speech Monday, Kennedy described encounters across America with people he called the “ranks of the dispossessed,” interspersed with barbs about “the surveillance state” and the “tyranny of corruption.” He quoted the Old Testament, John Adams, Martin Luther King Jr., Tennyson and his father.
But Kennedy, the scion of a liberal political dynasty, has alienated his own family members and many Democrats with his promotion of conspiracy theories, his rejection
of scientific orthodoxies and his embrace of far-right political figures.
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” four of Kennedy’s siblings — Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — said in a statement Monday. “We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has been lionized by a movement that has expanded beyond anti-vaccine sentiments, including opposition to the mandatory vaccination of children, to push back more broadly against state public health measures. In recent years, his open suspicions about the government’s handling of the coronavirus and his criticism of lockdowns and vaccine policies gave him a new platform and earned him popularity among many Americans who had wearied of pandemic-related restrictions.
To roars of applause, Kennedy told his supporters they were “declaring independence” from a lengthy list of perceived adversaries: “Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Pharma”; the “military industrial complex”; “the mercenary media”; “the cynical elites”; both of the major political parties; and “the entire rigged system.”
He has built a base of support made up of disaffected voters across the political spectrum, but some Democrats have worried he poses the biggest threat to their party, fearing that any independent or third-party candidacy could peel off voters from Biden.
Shortly after Kennedy entered the race, some polls showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support — which was in large part a measure of the desire among some for an alternative to Biden. However, Kennedy’s numbers have sagged in recent months.
The Republican National Committee, in a reflection of its own concerns about Kennedy, sent out an email Monday titled “23 Reasons to Oppose RFK Jr.,” listing ways in which he has been aligned with Democrats in the past.