CHICAGO — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s reported decision to end his longshot independent campaign for president is playing out dramatically differently for his would-be rivals, as Democrats and Republicans try to size up what a possible endorsement of former President Donald Trump could mean for the tight presidential race.
For Democrats, it could be cause for a headache. For Republicans, it’s cause for celebration.
Democrats have spent months trashing Kennedy and his campaign, repeatedly arguing in press releases that he’s a spoiler for Trump when polling suggested he could pull voters from President Joe Biden. But the dynamic has changed over the past month — through a combination of Kennedy’s fading support and Kamala Harris’ entrance — and polls have begun to show Kennedy might be more of a drag on Trump.
Trump’s campaign was paying close attention for months — and they noticed the shift.
About a week before the Republican National Convention, a small group had been working to try and get Kennedy to drop his longshot independent presidential bid and back Trump. The group included three people: Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and the investor Omeed Malik, according to a source familiar with the matter. They worked to broker talks between Trump and Kennedy and try to find a path for the independent candidate to back the soon-to-be Republican nominee.
The two candidates met at the convention in Milwaukee, around the time Kennedy had stopped doing public events. For weeks, Kennedy denied reports that he was planning to drop out of the race despite meeting with and holding private talks with Trump, The Washington Post reported.
But even after the meeting at the RNC, there was still little urgency to get him out of the race.
Trump Jr. — who had spent months pushing his father’s campaign to look for a way to get Kennedy to drop his bid — believed Kennedy could hurt Trump more than the Democrats, the source told NOTUS, but the data just wasn’t there to really alarm the campaign. But after Biden dropped out, the outlook became much clearer, the source added.
Trump and Kennedy are both scheduled to be in the Phoenix area on Friday.
The Harris, Trump and Kennedy campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy’s campaign has been explicit about their preference of Trump over Harris. In an interview released this week, Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said the campaign was debating whether to stay in or endorse Trump as a means of heading off Harris. And the campaign seems to take particular joy in trolling Democrats.
In Chicago, where Democrats were getting ready to formally roll out their vice presidential nominee on Wednesday night, the Kennedy campaign started the day trolling, around the same time it announced its plans for a “path forward” speech on Friday. The campaign had a pair of slow-moving trucks bearing its campaign logo rumble down where North Clark Street meets West Illinois Street, blasting what sounded like an anti-vax remix of “Safety Dance.”
A group of Democratic delegates, including former New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, were sitting at an outdoor cafe. As micro-parade met micro-convention, the clash began. “Kamala! Kamala!” the Democrats screamed at the trucks. One started yelling, “Where’s the bear?” a reference to RFK Jr. who once, by his own account, dumped a dead baby bear in Central Park.
That’s when a Kennedy supporter popped out of a hatch in the side of one of the trucks wearing a bear hat and yelled back, “That story actually works well in Appalachia!”
RFK Jr., who started his campaign as a Democrat, is the scion of the most famous Democratic Party family and has long argued his independent bid would pull voters from both Democrats and Republicans. If he’s right, a Trump endorsement could be bad for Democrats in several swing states. A recent poll out of Wisconsin, an important Blue Wall state, showed Kennedy sat on 8% of the vote when he was included, and Harris had just a 3% lead in a head-to-head with Trump. Even a small shift of Kennedy votes to Trump could be meaningful.
Rep. Dean Phillips — most famous for launching his own ill-fated bid against Biden — texted NOTUS: “The lesson of 2024 is that competition is always the best recipe for Democrats and democracy.”
“Had the DNC promoted a legitimate primary, I wouldn’t have been compelled to run myself, we would have avoided the trauma of June 27th and its aftermath, and mitigated the risk of a former Democrat (RFK Jr.) potentially swinging the election to Donald Trump,” he said.
But Democrats in Chicago are feeling a surge of momentum for Harris, and even the Wisconsin delegation brushed off any concerns over Kennedy’s machinations.
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler told NOTUS his party’s research on Kennedy voters showed that many of them didn’t like either candidate back when Biden was at the top of the ticket. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “offered a compelling alternative,” he said.
So did the Kennedy noise ruin the Democrats’ night?
“No, far from it,” Wikler said. “It’s got to be a hard time in the extremely small circle of RFK Jr. diehards, but for the rest of America, the real story is happening here in Chicago.”
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Evan McMorris-Santoro and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS. Riley Rogerson and Jasmine Wright contributed reporting.