Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, will be on the Texas general election ballot this November.
The Texas Secretary of State’s office announced Thursday afternoon that it had accepted Kennedy’s petition to appear on the state ballot with 122,513 valid signatures. The Texas election code required a petition to have at least 113,151 valid signatures.
State Democrats said that Kennedy’s campaign didn’t have enough valid signatures and that his “attempt to overwhelm the system with bad signatures is just another example of his campaign’s disregard for the rules.”
Questions have been raised in other states about Kennedy signature gatherers and the use of misleading tactics while collecting signatures. This push from state Democrats to keep Kennedy off the ballot also aligned with national Democrats’ efforts to keep the Independent candidate off state ballots as his campaign continues to try to get ballot access in all 50 states.
Per the Chron, this may not quite be finalized just yet.
Last month, the Texas Democratic Party indicated it may sue to keep Kennedy’s name off the state ballot, alleging that most of the campaign’s signatures were invalid.
The party’s lawyer, Chad Dunn, wrote in a letter to the Secretary of States’ office on July 18 that he and his client John Mott, the Texas Democratic Party’s voter protection director, checked the signatures, which they obtained via a public records request.
They matched the names up against voter registration data and found that of the first 245,000 signatures, almost 70% were invalid, but they did not explain why.
Dunn asked the office to “kindly let us know of your decision on the certification of this application as soon as possible and with sufficient time for any aggrieved party to seek appropriate court review.” He could not be immediately reached for comment on whether the party intends to sue.
Lots of maybes in there, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I would bet on him remaining on the ballot if it came to it, and the time to file a lawsuit before the deadline for finalizing the ballot is rapidly running out.
Is RFKJr likely to have an effect on the outcome in the state? On the one hand:
Kennedy’s ballot appearance has faced challenges from Democratic officials in multiple states, arguing his campaign used misleading tactics while collecting signatures. According to the Dallas Morning News, Texas Democrats, who haven’t won a statewide election in over 30 years, view Kennedy’s independent bid as a potential threat to their chances of breaking that streak.
However, now that President Joe Biden decided to withdraw from the race, Kennedy has had a strange effect in the polls: he is taking more votes from Trump than from Vice President Kamala Harris.
According to the Washington Post, polls with third-party candidates and Kennedy result in Harris [gaining on] Trump. A poll conducted by the Marquette University Law school had Harris leading Trump by six points (53 percent to 47 percent) in a head-to-head matchup; in a race including Kennedy and third-party candidates, Harris led Trump by eight points (50 to 42).
It’s clear that Kamala Harris has fired up the Democratic base, which should help reduce defections to gremlins like RFKJr. I think it’s way too soon to say whether the total effect benefits one candidate or the other. Or, as Mark Jones would have you believe in the Chron story, that it might benefit a downballot candidate like Colin Allred. I’ll need to see a lot more polling evidence before I draw any inferences.
And on the other hand.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign is disappearing — both on the trail and in the polls.
The last public event put on by Kennedy was in Freeport, Maine, on July 9. Kennedy has since spoken virtually and appeared at a cryptocurrency conference and events put on by others, but he hasn’t been stumping on the campaign trail. (He did speak in person with reporters the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.) And it’s been months since his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has had a public event on the campaign trail.
Kennedy’s public poll numbers are dropping, from around 9% or 10% in national surveys before Biden dropped out, to about half that level now. His last financial report showed the campaign carrying debt equal to more than half of the $5.6 million it had in the bank. On a media call last week, Kennedy said Democrats and Republicans colluded to make it “insurmountable” for an independent to get on the ballot in all 50 states — which he and his campaign had previously talked about as a matter of when, not if.
Maybe the guy’s just a low-energy grifter who will slowly fade from the public view as the brain worm and bear carcass stories run their course. I haven’t decided yet whether the over/under line for him in Texas is two points or three, but for sure I’d bet the under on five points.
Shock me, that as in North Carolina, the Democratic Party, whose national campaign theme is that “democracy is in danger,” might file an anti-democratic suit or take other actions to try to keep a third-party or independent candidate is off the ballot.
That cover story has long been blown. Just pointing it out for Kuff and his readers.
That’s a nice North Carolina non sequitur, Gadfly. I agree the argument the NC Dems were making was weak, and a judge agreed the day after your post.
Also in the news, in New York they’ve decided RFK fibbed a bit on his filings and removed him from the ballot there. If someone were worried about his spoiler potential, New York isn’t a place where that’s likely.