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    Robert Kennedy Jr. Hints Strongly at Third-Party Presidential Bid

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    The political scion, whose long-shot Democratic primary challenge has faltered, released a video teasing a third-party candidacy that would put Democrats on high alert.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hinted strongly on Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Biden, a move that would set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.Mr. Kennedy, in a video released by his campaign, teased a “major announcement” in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, promising to speak about “a sea change in American politics” and dropping clues that he would be continuing his presidential campaign outside the Democratic Party.“How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?” Mr. Kennedy says in the video. “It’s not through playing the game by the corrupt rules that the corrupt powers and the vested interests have rigged to keep us all in their thrall. Instead, we’re going to have to rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”“What I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory,” he declares at another point, saying that the more he sees the inherent goodness of the American people, “the more the path to victory becomes visible.”Mr. Kennedy’s top aides declined to elaborate about his intentions. But his supporters have expressed frustration with the Democratic National Committee’s primary process, which has been geared toward backing Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.“It’s kind of obvious,” said Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, who is backing Mr. Kennedy. “The primaries are so rigged, there’s no debates.”Mr. Kennedy, he added, “has to look at his options.”Democrats have watched Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy nervously since it began in April. They fear that any third-party candidacy could siphon off crucial votes from Mr. Biden, ultimately helping former President Donald J. Trump, the current favorite to be the Republican nominee.Mr. Kennedy, 69, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories whose family has symbolized Democratic politics for decades, has built a following among Silicon Valley tech executives, disaffected voters in both parties and skeptics of the medical and scientific establishments.After some polls in the late spring showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support, Mr. Kennedy’s fortunes fell as more attention was paid to his panoply of views on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration and vaccines that are well outside the party’s mainstream.By late summer, surveys showed Mr. Kennedy polling in the low single digits. With his campaign roiled by news coverage of recordings of bigoted remarks he made at a New York dinner, he no longer appeared to be a threat to Mr. Biden.In recent months, Mr. Kennedy has dropped hints about continuing his campaign as a third-party candidate. He met in July with the Libertarian Party chairwoman and suggested on a podcast that he could leave the Democratic Party.As the reality set in for Mr. Kennedy that Mr. Biden would not debate him, he began using his platform to become more critical of the party and its presidential election process.This month, he published an open letter to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chairman, and party members pleading for accommodations.“The D.N.C. is not supposed to favor one candidate over another,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.The Biden campaign and its allies at the D.N.C. have summarily dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. .The fact that some Republicans believe it would be advantageous to Mr. Trump if Mr. Kennedy embarks on a third-party run has raised questions about whether anyone in the former president’s world has encouraged it.But Mr. Kennedy has in recent months become far more popular with Republicans than he is with Democrats. His campaign in the Democratic primary has been supported by Republicans: David Sacks, a donor for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, hosted a fund-raiser for him in June.While Democrats are nervous that any third-party options would hurt Mr. Biden, it’s not clear from whom Mr. Kennedy would draw more votes if he qualified for the ballot in key battleground states.Over the years, third-party candidacies have been a focus of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.“I predict #RFK abandons the rigged Democrat nominating process and runs as an Independent,” Mr. Stone wrote on Sept. 24 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Stone said he had no involvement in Mr. Kennedy’s effort. “I’m supporting Donald Trump,” he said.Corey Lewandowski, an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his campaign manager during the 2016 election, wrote on X in response to an article about Mr. Kennedy’s possible move, “If true the race is over for @JoeBiden⁩!”Despite Mr. Kennedy’s earlier flirtation with the Libertarian Party, Brian McWilliams, a spokesman for the party, said there had been no recent conversations between Mr. Kennedy and its leadership.Placing himself on the ballot as a candidate of a newly established third party would be an onerous and expensive proposition for Mr. Kennedy, who would have to navigate ballot access laws in enough states to be a serious presidential candidate.Maggie Haberman More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Flirts With the Libertarian Party

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      Mr. Kennedy sat down with the party’s chair in July, a previously undisclosed meeting, as Democrats fret about a third party bid.For months, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he plans to continue his long-shot challenge against President Biden in the Democratic primary rather than dropping out to launch a third-party bid.But lately Mr. Kennedy’s message has seemed to shift, including publicly telling a voter who asked about his plans that he was keeping his “options open.”If Mr. Kennedy does decide to leave the party of his famous father and uncles to run in the general election, one potential landing spot may be the Libertarian Party, which at the moment lacks a widely known candidate but has excelled at securing ballot access.In July, Mr. Kennedy met privately with Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, at a conference they were both attending in Memphis — a meeting that has not previously been reported.“He emphasized that he was committed to running as a Democrat but said that he considered himself very libertarian,” Ms. McArdle said in an interview, adding that they agreed on several positions, including the threat of the “deep state” and the need for populist messaging. “We’re aligned on a lot of issues.” “My perspective is that we are going to stay in touch in case he does decide to run,” Ms. McArdle said. “And he can contact me at any time if that’s the case.”In a June interview with the libertarian magazine Reason, Mr. Kennedy acknowledged his ideological disagreements with the party — including on issues like environmental protection, abortion and civil rights — while also saying, “I’ve always been aligned with libertarians on most issues.”In a general election, Democrats worry that a third-party run by Mr. Kennedy could draw votes away from Mr. Biden and help elect former President Donald J. Trump. They have expressed similar concerns about No Labels, the bipartisan group trying to recruit a moderate candidate for a third-party run, and also about the progressive scholar Cornel West, who is already in the race to lead the Green Party’s ticket for 2024.Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, has been helping coordinate Democratic efforts to stop the No Labels effort. He said the hope in the party has been that Mr. Kennedy would “go away” after losing primaries to Mr. Biden.“It would be very bad” if Mr. Kennedy runs as a Libertarian, Mr. Bennett said. “We’ve been very clear that third parties in close elections can be very dangerous and would almost certainly hurt the president. That would be true of a No Labels candidate and it would be true of R.F.K.”Dennis Kucinich, Mr. Kennedy’s campaign manager, said there was “no truth” to the idea that Mr. Kennedy could run as a Libertarian. He said the meeting with Ms. McArdle simply offered “further proof of Mr. Kennedy’s appeal across the political spectrum.”“We have not sought the favor of any other political party,” Mr. Kucinich said.Ms. McArdle said that the meeting, at the libertarian FreedomFest convention, had been requested by Heal the Divide, a pro-Kennedy super PAC, and that she spoke with Mr. Kennedy for nearly an hour but had not had further meetings. He separately met with other leaders of the libertarian movement at the conference, she added.Mr. Kennedy, who is perhaps best known for his conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines, would likely become a favorite to win the Libertarian nomination given his national name recognition. In the Democratic primary, Mr. Kennedy is trailing Mr. Biden by roughly 50 points, according to 538’s national polling average, and his bid against the incumbent president is not seen as competitive. He has argued that Mr. Biden’s allies at the Democratic National Committee are trying to squeeze him out of the race, including by moving to hold the party’s first primary in the Biden-friendly state of South Carolina.In past comments, Mr. Kennedy committed to sticking with the party long identified with the Kennedy clan. Late last month, Mr. Kennedy told Fox News that his mission was to “summon the Democratic Party back to its traditional ideals.” But more recently, Mr. Kennedy has seemed to hint that could change. In response to a South Carolina voter’s question this month about whether he would launch an independent bid, Mr. Kennedy said the D.N.C. is “trying to make sure that I can’t participate at all in the political process, and so I’m going to keep all my options open,” according to ABC News.Surveys have shown that a growing number of Americans are unhappy with both major political parties. But they have also expressed little appetite for third parties.In 2016, the moderate Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, and his running mate, former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, received 3.3 percent of the popular vote. That was the best performance by a third-party ticket since Ross Perot ran on the Reform Party ballot in 1996.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson said he thought Mr. Kennedy might struggle to win over Libertarian voters given that he is now a Democrat. But he said he would favor Mr. Kennedy over both the current and former presidents in a general election, should they all win their respective nominating contests.“If Kennedy manages to get through the process and become the Libertarian nominee, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat,” Mr. Johnson said, “because he’s not Biden and he’s not Trump.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      For First Time Since 1946, New Yorkers Have Just 2 Choices for Governor

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      ALBANY, N.Y. — New York voters who dislike the Democrat or Republican candidates for governor have traditionally been able to cast their ballots for a long-shot candidate from any number of so-called third parties.There are the perennials, like the Green and Libertarian Parties, and the occasional, like the Sapient Party in 2014 or the Serve America Movement four years later. And 2010 was a banner year that featured candidates from the Freedom Party, the Anti-Prohibition Party and, memorably, the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.But this year, for the first time in over 75 years, the state ballot appears destined to offer only two choices: Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, and Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican.The paucity of options is largely due to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who championed changes in election law two years ago that made it far more difficult for third parties to get on the ballot. The changes to ballot access law tripled the number of voter signatures required for groups to get on the November ballot and forced political parties to qualify every two years instead of four.The steep climb to get on the ballot has prompted legal challenges, including one being heard this week in State Supreme Court in Albany, in a lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party. The party’s nominee for governor, Larry Sharpe, argued that the rules are so tough that only the entrenched and connected can earn the right to appear on a ballot in New York.But even mainstream candidates have had their problems.Mr. Zeldin and Ms. Hochul will each appear on two party lines: The governor will also run on the Working Families Party line, and Mr. Zeldin will run for the Conservative Party.But Mr. Zeldin, an underdog in the race, wanted his name under a third party and gathered petitions for the Independence Party line. It did not end well.The State Board of Elections invalidated Zeldin’s Independence Party application on July 12, after a challenge from the Libertarians and others. An investigation revealed such a high volume of flawed petitions — with duplicates carefully ensconced amid hundreds of otherwise valid pages — that critics say it’s hard to imagine it was an accident.“The way the pages were distributed throughout the petition, it seems to me that it’s an obvious attempt to put together enough signatures to qualify and to obfuscate the fraud,” said Henry Berger, an election law expert and former New York City councilman. “This one is not complicated. This is simple, blatant fraud.”The Zeldin campaign attributed the flawed petitions to mistakes made by “an entirely grass-roots effort.” New York’s 2022 ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.N.Y. Governor’s Race: Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the issue of abortion rights has the potential to be a potent one in the battle between Gov. Kathy Hochul and Representative Lee Zeldin.10th Congressional District: Half a century after she became one of the youngest women ever to serve in Congress, Elizabeth Holtzman is running once again for a seat in the House of Representatives.12th Congressional District: As Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, two titans of New York politics, battle it out, Suraj Patel is trying to eke out his own path to victory.Yet Eric Amidon, who describes himself on Twitter as Zeldin’s campaign manager, signed off on all 47 volumes of the petition submitted to the state, affirming in the official paperwork that the submission contained enough signatures to qualify and listing himself as the “contact person to correct deficiencies.”Mr. Amidon, who gave a Zeldin campaign email address on the petitions, told The New York Times in an email that he was “shocked to hear there were copies placed in the petitions” and said he was “positive no one working for the campaign made any copies.”“We run a virtually paper-free campaign and don’t even own a copier,” he said. But Mr. Amidon and the Zeldin campaign ignored follow-up questions and wouldn’t say who assembled the petitions, or whether paid vendors helped out. As the deadline for turning in the signatures drew near in late May, a post on the Facebook page of the far right group Long Island Loud Majority practically begged for help to get the signatures to boost Zeldin’s political fortunes.“Anyone looking to make some extra money this weekend (30 an hour) and help out OUR NEXT GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK LEE ZELDIN. We need people to get Petitions signed to get Lee on the Independent Line,” the post said. It urged those interested to “contact Jordana at the Zeldin team” and listed an email address affiliated with Zeldin’s campaign website.Jordana McMahon, a paid Zeldin campaign staffer, was listed as a witness to some of the signature pages, including at least one page that was used twice and got thrown out.Emails to the Zeldin campaign website went unanswered, and Mr. Zeldin’s campaign did not respond to questions about the Facebook post or the role of paid workers or vendors in the signature drive.Other witnesses of signature pages used at least twice in the Zeldin petition included the Republican county clerk in Chautauqua County, Larry Barmore, and Assemblyman David DiPietro, a Republican from western New York. Mr. DiPietro’s office declined to comment.Mr. Barmore said he understood that county-level Republican leaders helped collect signatures so Mr. Zeldin could get on the ballot as an Independence Party candidate. He gave his signatures to Nacole Ellis, the Republican Party chairwoman in Chautauqua County, and Ms. Ellis said she gave them to the Zeldin campaign.It hasn’t been lost on critics that Mr. Zeldin, as a member of Congress on Jan. 6, voted against the certification of Arizona and Pennsylvania, states that President Biden won. Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul, said that Mr. Zeldin and his advisers were “focused on deceiving voters and undermining elections, whether it’s for governor of New York or president of the United States.”“It’s no surprise that someone who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election is now attempting to lie and defraud his way onto the Independence Party ballot line,” Mr. Harvey said.Andrew Kolstee, the Libertarian Party secretary who objected to the Zeldin submission and laid out all his findings on a website called Zeldincopies.com, called for state authorities to find out what happened and punish anyone who broke the law.“This was a deliberate attempt to defraud the voter, and those involved should be held responsible,” he said.The Board of Elections declined to comment about whether its enforcement division would be taking any action against the Zeldin campaign. A spokesman for the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares, said it had gotten no referrals but would defer to Attorney General Letitia James. Her office declined to comment.In court this week, Mr. Sharpe, the Libertarian candidate for governor, tried to convince a skeptical-sounding Judge David Weinstein that his constitutional rights were violated in late June when the State Board of Elections invoked the Cuomo-era law and rejected his application for a spot on the ballot.Mr. Sharpe said that getting the required 45,000 signatures, up from 15,000, requires a huge and expensive effort — with dozens of people on the payroll at cost of $8,000 a day or more.Howie Hawkins was the Green Party candidate for governor in the last three statewide elections. His party lost its ballot spot.Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times“We have a situation now where the only people who would ever want to run for office are those who are already in office,” Mr. Sharpe said. While acknowledging nearly all third-party candidates lose, he said voters showing up to the polls to say “not you two” are engaging in a high form of political protest — one that will be lost not only in races for governor but in future presidential contests, too.The judge, who pointed to a prior federal ruling upholding the new state ballot access law, said on Monday he would issue a written decision shortly.The Libertarian Party was one of at least seven small political parties that failed to get on the ballot this year after the onerous new ballot access law went into effect.Not since 1946, when Republican Thomas E. Dewey defeated Democrat James M. Mead in a landslide, have New York voters been reduced to just two choices for governor. That year, according to a report in The Times, three minor parties — the Socialist, Industrial Government and Socialist Workers parties — got knocked off the ballot because of “defective nominating petitions.”Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for governor in the last three statewide elections, said voters are surprised when he tells them his party lost its spot on the ballot this year. He is hoping the Legislature will step in and make it easier next time.“I don’t think it’s a lost cause — although it’s a tough fight,” he said. More