Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Friday that he is suspending his independent campaign for president and endorsed former president Donald Trump.
While announcing his suspension of his campaign, Kennedy said that he is choosing to stay on the ballot in most states but will remove his name in swing states. He didn’t name which states, but according to The Texas Secretary of State website Kennedy has withdrawn from being on the Texas ballot. Kennedy did withdraw from the Arizona ballot on Thursday.
Recent polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of winning Texas, a stronger showing than when President Joe Biden was a candidate for reelection and was polling behind Trump in Texas by nearly double digits. In the same poll, Kennedy had roughly 2% of support from likely Texans voters. He had reached a high of 8% in earlier polling.
Two weeks ago, the Texas Secretary of State’s office accepted Kennedy’s petition to appear on the state ballot. According to the state election code, a candidate has until the 74th day before election day to withdraw from the general election.
Yes, it was barely two weeks ago that he got on the ballot. Someone sure wasted a bunch of money on that effort. According to the Associated Press, Kennedy said he “would work to remove his name from ballots in 10 swing states where he believes he does not have a chance of winning”. (Pause for deep breaths as I struggle to keep a straight face.) Congratulations to us for making it as a swing state, I guess. If RFK Jr (snicker) believes it, it must be true.
As noted before, I doubt his exit really affects anything here – probably not anywhere else either, as the weirdness factor may outweigh any positive-for-Trump effects – but it does give the pundit class a day or two’s worth of material. I’m just impressed his campaign had sufficient levels of executive function to do the withdrawal paperwork in a timely fashion. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, dude.
I was asked to sign one of those petitions. The guy who asked me seemed rather enthusiastic about RFK Jr. although he might have been a very good actor. But if he and his fellow signature gatherers were sincere, I wonder how betrayed they now feel.
I didn’t sign and I’m not sure my signature would have counted, given that I voted in the Democratic primary.
Doesn’t matter. Vote Claudia de la Cruz.
No, seriously.
Interestingly, the Texas SOS has one glaring omission on their list of qualified candidates for president and vice-president, and it’s not who you think (as a hint, their initials are DJT and JDV). It does reflect RFK Jr’s withdrawal.
https://candidate.texas-election.com/Elections/getQualifiedCandidatesInfo.do
Fly had never heard of them. If they had a presence that could allow Trump to become dictator, I would probably do as I did when Nadar was on the ballot. I contacted a person in Florida and offered to vote for Nadar if they would vote for Gore.
I have no idea if the person in Florida kept his word, but I did.
I might be tempted to vote for a presidential candidate for a third party if that third party could manage to have some members of congress (not even a lot, just more than one or two), or enough members of a state leg to keep both other parties from having a supermajority, or some mayors or DAs or school board members or other local government folks.
Don’t ask me throw votes at a 1 percenter for the big chair if your party isn’t actually influencing the government in real ways.
It looks like the election could be close here, and RFK Jr might have taken 2 or 3 percent from Trump and perhaps tipped it in Kamala’s favor. I hope he changes his mind and dives back in.
RFK jr bigger goal is to influence the elections in 2028. It is an interesting plan and we will see how it plays out