After months of speculation regarding whether independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-shot White House bid would take more votes away from the Republican or Democratic nominee, his announcement this week of a running mate has fueled an assessment on both sides of the aisle that presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump will benefit in the end.
Kennedy introduced Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy Democratic Party donor with a long track record of supporting leftist causes, as his vice presidential pick during a campaign event on Tuesday.
Though not a household name, a slew of media reports soon surfaced to offer an overview of Shanahan’s background and political ideology.
In addition to her donations to a variety of left-leaning candidates, including President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, a major focus of her activism has been criminal justice reform. As she boasted in 2021, she was a “major donor” for a measure introduced in Los Angeles County, California, that, in part, called for a requirement that “at least 10% of locally generated, unrestricted revenue be reinvested into community development and alternatives to incarceration.
Measure J, as it was known, also “prohibits using funds for carceral systems and law enforcement agencies.”
The fact that her far-left views on criminal justice and other issues might appeal to Biden voters was not lost on the Democratic Party establishment, which has been ramping up its opposition to the Kennedy campaign in recent weeks.
Kennedy’s own sister, who previously revealed that she would not be voting for him in November, expressed her fear that his White House bid will take enough votes away from Biden to secure a second term for Trump.
Why does Rory Kennedy call her brother, RFK Jr.’s, presidential campaign “dangerous”?
“It’s really about siphoning votes from Biden,” she tells OutFront pic.twitter.com/N2ZjYOuUGG
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) March 26, 2024
“It is really about siphoning votes from Biden,” Rory Kennedy said in a recent interview. “The polls I am seeing Bobby is taking 70% of the votes from Biden and 30% from Trump.
I feel strongly that this is the most important election of our lifetime, and there is so much at stake. And I do think it’s going to come down to a handful of votes and a handful of states. I do worry that Bobby just taking some percentage of votes from Biden could shift the election and lead to Trump’s election.”
