Independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last Tuesday named philanthropist Nicole Shanahan as his running mate, the Associated Press reported.
The 38-year-old California attorney is the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and founder of the Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization that funds groups that advocate for abortion rights, criminal justice reform, and climate change.
In a campaign event in Shanahan’s home city of Oakland, California, Kennedy said like him, Shanahan left the Democrat Party, not because her values changed but because the Democrat Party changed.
The longshot third-party candidate acknowledged the obstacles his campaign faces in 2024 and urged voters to “take a risk” and vote for him over Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
The Kennedy scion said his campaign’s biggest obstacle was the assumption that he could not win. He told the crowd that if his campaign could “get Americans to refuse to vote from fear,” then he and Shanahan would be heading to the White House.
RFK’s independent run has panicked the Democrats who fear that he may siphon voters away from President Biden and boost Donald Trump.
While both the Trump and Biden campaigns have attacked Kennedy, they have taken very different approaches to dealing with the candidate.
The Biden campaign and the DNC have dedicated teams to address the threat Kennedy poses to the president while the Trump campaign has taken a more wait-and-see approach believing that Kennedy will do more harm to Biden than to Trump.
The DNC has been fighting to keep Kennedy off the ballot and filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the Kennedy campaign was illegally coordinating with the American Values 2024 super PAC which is leading the effort to get Kennedy’s name on the ballot in multiple states.
In a Truth Social post last Tuesday, Donald Trump responded to Kennedy’s choice of Nicole Shanahan, saying she was even more liberal than Kennedy and suggesting that her selection as running mate would be “great for MAGA.”
