Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose Nicole Shanahan on Tuesday, March 26, to be his vice presidential pick as he mounts an independent White House bid that has spooked national Democrats. Kennedy, a former Democrat, made the announcement in Oakland, California.
Shanahan is a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office. Shanahan leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes.
"This announcement is really going to shake up the political establishment," Kennedy said in a video he posted on social media last week. "Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party," he said. "Our values didn’t change. The Democratic Party did."
Without the backing of a party, Kennedy faces an arduous task to get on the ballot, with varying rules across the 50 states. He’s picking a running mate now because about half of the states require him to designate one before he can apply for ballot access.
The requirement is already bedeviling Kennedy's ballot access effort in Nevada, where Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a March 7 letter to independent candidates that they must nominate a vice presidential candidate before collecting signatures. The letter came days after Kennedy's campaign announced he'd collected enough signatures in the state. If Aguilar's opinion survives a likely legal challenge, Kennedy will have to start again in collecting just over 10,000 signatures in the state. "This is the epitome of corruption," said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign lawyer, in a statement Monday, accusing Aguilar of doing the bidding of the Democratic National Committee.
Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.
Along the way, his activism has veered into conspiracies and contradicted scientific consensus, most infamously on vaccines. Some members of his family have publicly criticized his views. Dozens of Kennedy family members sent a message when they posed with Biden at a St. Patrick’s Day reception at the White House in a photo his sister Kerry Kennedy posted to social media.
RFK Jr. is leveraging a network of loyal supporters he's built over years, many of them drawn to his anti-vaccine activism and his message that the US government is beholden to corporations.