Third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign announced Monday that it met the signature requirement to qualify for the ballot in a fifth state, North Carolina.
Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has collected some 23,000 signatures in the Tar Heel State and will run under the We the People Party, which supporters established in the state, a press release stated. The Kennedy Jr. campaign exceeded the 13,757 signature threshold required to be met by the May 31 deadline by some 10,000 signatures.
He is officially on the ballot in Utah, and his campaign notes that he has completed petitioning in three other states, including the swing states of Nevada and New Hampshire.
“In Hawaii, the Office of Elections has confirmed Kennedy Jr. supporters have collected the required signatures to establish the ‘We The People’ party,” the release adds.
Notably, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire are three key swing states that will play pivotal roles in deciding the outcome of the November election.
On Tuesday, the former Democrat announced leftist lawyer Nicole Shanahan, who donated thousands to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and became an early supporter of Kennedy Jr. this cycle, as his running mate.
Nicole Shanahan (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
The release notes that “[t]he campaign was already actively collecting signatures in 16 states before announcing a vice president. After the announcement, 19 additional states opened for petitioning.”
An interactive map on the campaign website shows that petitioning has not yet opened in 11 states: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. The petitioning process also has yet to open in Washington, DC.
The campaign’s “robust ballot access plan” aims “to ensure” he is an option to voters in all 50 states come November.
“We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters, and strategists ready to get the job done,” campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear said in the release.
Kennedy Jr. is currently the third strongest candidate behind former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.
The national RealClear Politics polling average shows Trump leading with 42 percent support in a five-way race that also includes third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein. Biden comes in second at 39.6 percent, while Kennedy Jr. averages 10.3 percent. Stein and West register at two percent and 1.9 percent, respectively.
After Kennedy Jr. announced Shanahan as his running mate, Trump took to Truth Social to share that he loved Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy, declaring him “Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, not mine.”
He also dubbed Kennedy Jr. “the most Radical Left Candidate in the race.”
