Campaign Coverage

Jun 17, 2024

News Coverage

RFK Jr. Makes Stop in New Mexico for Discussion on Drug Problems

KOB 4 News reports: The general election is still more than four months out and, for the first time during this election cycle, a presidential candidate stopped in New Mexico. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Albuquerque over the weekend to premiere his documentary, “Recovering America.” It’s focused on drug addiction and substance abuse. “New Mexico is ground zero for the drug overdose, drug addiction problems in our country, and I wanted to be there, so it was an appropriate place for us to air this film,” Kennedy said. Kennedy says border cities are paying the price. “I’ve been to the border many times, and I’ve seen that it’s a humanitarian crisis that people who are coming across are traumatized. They’ve been robbed, exploited, extorted by the drug cartels. And it’s not and then they come into this country, and they can’t legally work. They’re given an asylum date seven years in the future,” Kennedy said. A couple of New Mexicans were also featured in a panel discussion with Kennedy to share their stories of recovery. That panel included Chef Fernando Ruiz, a Santa Fe chef who turned his life around. After spending time behind bars trading drugs, he now spends time in the kitchen serving up award-winning dishes at his restaurant, Escondido. And Ralph Martinez, who opened the first homeless shelter in Española. Martinez himself was homeless in Española at one point. Read the full article here.

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Jun 16, 2024

News Coverage

RFK Jr. Shares 2024 Presidential Impact in Albuquerque

KOAT Action News reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told KOAT he has qualified for the first 2024 presidential election in Atlanta on Thursday, June 27, and expressed why he believes he will have a successful campaign.  Faith Egbuonu: As an independent presidential candidate, what is your take on the impact you could have on this election? RFK Jr.: My intended impact is to win the campaign and be president of the United States. And I will have a big impact because I'll be addressing issues that neither President Biden or President Trump can address, including the national debt, $34 trillion. We're now spending more on our military budget – we're now spending more on servicing the debt, our military budget, within five years, 50 cents of every dollar that we collect will be in taxes, will go to servicing that debt within 10 years, 100%. It's existential. President Trump and President Biden can't address it because they actually ran up the bulk of that debt in each of their administrations – $8 trillion a piece. And you know that all the other issues, the division in our country, the polarization, the chronic disease epidemic, the addiction to war, the corrupt merger of state and corporate power, which they presided over, and those are issues that I can fix, and I can. So, my impact will be enormous. Read the full article here.

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Jun 14, 2024

News Coverage

What Could Third-Party Candidates Mean For Minnesota's 2024 Presidential Election?

The Star Tribune reports: The campaign of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it has gathered the required signatures to appear on Minnesota's ballot this fall. This November has all the ingredients to be a better-than-usual election cycle for third-party candidates in Minnesota. President Joe Biden's poll numbers are sagging as he struggles to hold together the coalition that elected him four years ago. Former President Donald Trump is rallying the conservative base but his felony convictions are turning off some independents. Many voters are unexcited about the prospect of voting for either candidate. Plus, Minnesota has been here before. "I did vote for Jesse Ventura ... it wasn't that big of a leap for me," said Mark Frascone, a 65-year-old Eagan resident and longtime Democrat who is supporting independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this fall. "Right now there's a big legal slugfest between the two major parties with the indictments and trials. I don't know that people are going to want to keep voting for that." Read the full article here.

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Jun 14, 2024

News Coverage

Kennedy Points to Housing Affordability in Pitch to Southern California Voters

The Orange County Register reports: Third-party presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed to housing affordability as he made his case to Southern California voters ahead of the November election. “If we’re going to keep our middle class — which is the greatest economic engine in the history of mankind — if it’s going to continue to be the foundation stone of democracy, we need to make sure that all of our kids can get into houses,” said Kennedy. Kennedy, 70, has qualified to be on the ballot in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah so far, per the New York Times’ tracker. Petitioning for ballot access is ongoing in several other states, according to his campaign. Read the full article here.

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Jun 13, 2024

News Coverage

At Nixon Library, RFK Jr. Calls For Cutting U.S. Military Budget In Half

The LA Times reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told an Orange County audience Wednesday night that America faces an existential threat because of its insistence on behaving like an imperial power rather than the moral leader it should be in the world. The independent presidential candidate said he would reverse the nation’s “decay” by cutting the U.S. military budget by half in his first three years in office — with additional reductions in the future — and using the savings to bolster domestic programs and the economy. “In the end, we’re going to have a stronger, smarter, better-targeted national defense,” Kennedy said. “If we use those savings to rebuild our country in every way, we will reverse ... spending that is a constant drain on our nation’s vitality.” Read the full article here.

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Jun 13, 2024

News Coverage

OPINION: An Indigenous and Youth Wave Could Make RFK Jr. a Real Contender in New Mexico

Albuquerque Journal reports: Every so often, I’d glad I usually answer my work phone. Allowing calls to go to voicemail can be tempting when you’re on deadline or under fire, but there’s no substitute for live engagement and raw aggression. It paid off last week, when a single call broadened my understanding of the complexities of New Mexico elections after 12 years of covering politics in the state. The caller, a Pueblo lady in her 90s, reached out to inquire about a June 6 letter to the editor, “RFK Jr. signature drive is underway in NM.” The lady, who said she was homebound 24/7 caring for her terminally ill husband, said she had fond memories of the Kennedy family. She didn’t mention Donald Trump or Joe Biden or anyone else. Instead, she talked about the shock of JFK’s assassination in 1963, the heartbreak at RFK’s assassination during the 1968 Democratic presidential primary, and the connection between the Kennedys and New Mexico’s pueblo and Indigenous communities dating back 64 years. I had never heard of that connection before. I gave her the number of the woman collecting signatures to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on New Mexico’s Nov. 5 presidential ballots, and the caller thanked me for being a “kind young man.” I’ll gladly take that at 58. The 15- to 20-minute conversation was an epiphany and made me start thinking about how RFK Jr. would fare in New Mexico, especially with a potential Indigenous wave. Read the full opinion piece here.

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Jun 13, 2024

News Coverage

Kennedy Vows to Cut Military Budget in Half

The New York Times reports:   Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that he would cut military spending by half by the end of his first term as president, and said the United States should have a reduced role in global affairs. “Military spending is a constant drain on our nation’s vitality,” Mr. Kennedy said in an hourlong speech on Wednesday evening at the Richard Nixon PresidentialLibrary in California, adding that “obsessed with the idea of our nation’s strength, we ignore the growing infirmity at our core.” Mr. Kennedy has long assailed American military spending and defense contractors, but his speech at the Nixon Library, which partly focused on foreign policy, painted a grim picture of American decline over the last 60 years and laid out a radically different vision of America’s place on the world stage. He said the United States should accept a diminished role in global affairs, divert much of the nation’s security spending to domestic programs, and prepare for a multipolar world — where other powerful countries like China and Russia would have increased influence and America would not be the sole global superpower. “We seem to think that we’re still where we were — in the same world as in 1991, ”Mr. Kennedy said, referring to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He added: “We are stuck in that past. Any nation, or for that matter any individual, can maintain an illusion like that only at an ever increasing cost.” Mr. Kennedy, who has made his opposition to providing military aid to Ukraine a central part of his campaign platform, provided a dark narrative of recentAmerican history to explain his position, saying that the United States had bankrupted itself in foreign “forever wars.” Denouncing “Bush-Cheney jingoism,” Mr. Kennedy said that the United States had “poured our wealth into one military operation after another in the pursuit of global empire,” and as a result, “our nation began to decay from within,” describing “an epidemic of chronic disease, a plague of addiction and historic economic inequality.” Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message, please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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Jun 11, 2024

News Coverage

FEC Tells CNN: RFK Jr. Must Be in Presidential Debate

Newsmax reports:   On Tuesday's "American Agenda," the FEC has told CNN that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must be included in the presidential debate, or the network would be breaking campaign finance laws. If you resonate with this message, please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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Jun 11, 2024

News Coverage

RFK Jr.’s Coalition Spans the Political Spectrum. That Could Have Consequences in November

CNN reports: In Wisconsin, a 62-year-old tree farm owner who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and a 22-year-old who cast her first presidential vote for Joe Biden that same year share one major thing in common now – they’re both planning to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this fall. And though neither of the Badger State residents has volunteered for a presidential campaign before, Dale Stenbroten and Katie Zimmerman spend their weekends trying to convince others to find the same inspiration in the independent candidate that they do. They are representative of Kennedy’s coalition of voters, which spans the political spectrum and has grown large enough to potentially alter the 2024 presidential race. These supporters – who say they’re drawn to Kennedy because of his stances on key issues and his rebuke of mainstream political parties – could have the greatest impact by tipping the balance in battleground states like Wisconsin, which has been decided by narrow margins in recent cycles. Stenbroten sees a refreshing level of authenticity in Kennedy. “He brings a lot of integrity to the table. I feel that I can trust him. I can believe him,” he said. For her part, Zimmerman, a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discovered Kennedy on YouTube and was instantly inspired. “He talked a lot about how he wanted to unite America and bring people together, instead of further divide them, and that’s something that means a lot to me, personally,” she said. Read the full article here.

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Jun 11, 2024

News Coverage

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Polling Surprisingly Well Among Latino Voters

The New York Times reports:   When Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Donald J. Trump faced off in the 2020 presidential election, Alexis Figueroa, a hospital worker in Phoenix, would have voted for Mr. Biden, he said, because he seemed like the least controversial of the two candidates. But with those men back on the ballot in November, Mr. Figueroa is considering a third option: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “He’s going after those who are new to voting, the younger generation not being heard,” Mr. Figueroa, now 20, said of Mr. Kennedy, adding that he did not want to vote for Mr. Biden because he did not believe that the president had fulfilled many of his promises. Polls show Mr. Kennedy drawing support away from both the Trump and Biden campaigns, but when it comes to Latinos, who tend to vote Democratic, he may pose a bigger threat to Mr. Biden. Read the full article here. If you resonate with this message, please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more.

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