Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement of progressive Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate on Tuesday sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic National Committee and President Joe Biden’s campaign. It also settled the debate over which party would be hurt the most by Kennedy’s candidacy: the Democrats.
Fox News reported that Shanahan, 38, the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, is a “philanthropist with a long history of donating to Democrat and left-leaning causes.” Following donations to Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 primaries, she supported Biden in the general election.
Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk noted on X that Shanahan donated more than $150,000 to Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon’s 2020 campaign, “the pro-crime, [George] Soros-backed prosecutor who helped wreck San Francisco and is currently wrecking LA.
“She also spent big on Measure J, a Los Angeles measure to reroute spending from law enforcement and prisons to ‘social services’ and ‘mental health treatment’ — in other words, not putting criminals and dangerous psychos behind bars,” he wrote.
Kirk sees Kennedy’s choice of Shanahan as an attempt to “shore up his progressive bona fides” and considers it to be a “major red flag for commonsense independents and centrist voters who are also sick of rising crime but intrigued by his campaign.”
Although Kennedy’s chances of winning the presidency are next to nil, his candidacy has already affected the 2024 race. He’s polling better than most independent candidates. The candidates’ vote shares in the RealClearPolitics average of five-way national polls are as follows: former President Donald Trump (42.3%), Biden (39.3%), Kennedy (10.4%), Green Party candidate Jill Stein (2%), and Independent Cornel West (1.9%). And Kennedy is polling even higher in several battleground states.
As polls have repeatedly shown, many voters are unhappy with a Biden-Trump rematch and remain open to an alternative. Kennedy is uncommonly articulate, he’s a skilled orator, and he still believes in the Constitution. His position on vaccines and his targeting of the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have appealed to many independents and some Republicans. But with his choice of the far-left Shanahan, Kennedy is likely to lose much, if not all, of his current support from conservatives and conservative-leaning independent voters, who will either cast their ballots for Trump or stay home.
By the same token, he will see an increase in support from progressive voters — the same ones the Biden campaign is courting. Stranahan’s tremendous wealth will also help put Kennedy’s name on the ballots in key battleground states. Additionally, many states block independent candidates from appearing on their ballots until they have named a running mate, which may be one reason why Kennedy revealed his choice so early. And the filing deadlines are rapidly approaching.
Kennedy’s announcement clearly exacerbated the situation, but the Biden campaign has always viewed his candidacy as a threat. According to the Hill, the DNC has been “allotting resources to weaken his campaign and paint him as a helpful reelection tool for Trump.”
On Tuesday, the gloves came off and the name-calling began. It was game on. The DNC hastily arranged a conference call with Democrats from battleground states. During the call, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said he was “personally offended and just disgusted by his [Kennedy’s] campaign. He should be ashamed of himself. He should stop running for president.”
Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow told colleagues: “There is absolutely no path for Kennedy to become president, and he knows that. That is why he picked a VP who can fund — who can buy his way onto the ballot in the number of states.
“First of all, that’s disgusting, and it is an abuse of our democracy,” McMorrow continued. “Second, that means that him being in the race means that there is a greater likelihood that Donald Trump will become president again. Something that I saw throughout the pandemic here in Michigan was a willingness of people like Trump … propping up some of the stories and rhetoric of RFK to sow distrust, particularly with women and moms.”
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis called Kennedy a spoiler, claiming that he’d been “drafted into this race by Donald Trump’s top supporters” and “has no realistic path to victory in Pennsylvania.”
Davis is right. Kennedy is a spoiler and he has no chance of winning Pennsylvania or any other state. But Davis knows that elections are often won or lost by tiny margins, particularly in battleground states. He remembers how close Trump’s margins of victory were in 2016.
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump wrote: “Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively — and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Those three wins gave him 46 electoral votes; if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she’d have won the electoral vote, too.”
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The margins were even closer in 2020. NPR reported, “Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.”
With Shanahan on the ticket, Biden and Kennedy are now targeting the same voters and, unfortunately for Biden, it’s a zero-sum game. Remember how well a similar situation turned out for President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner, Power Line, and AFNN, and she is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation Academy. She is a past contributor to RedState, Newsmax, the Western Journal, and Bongino.com. Her articles have appeared on RealClearPolitics, MSN, the Federalist, and many other sites. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.