The Kennedy who could be a kingmaker in the presidential race

Could it be that this November, for the first time in 64 years, a scion of arguably the most storied name in American politics could be elected president? That a grandson of the US ambassador to the Court of St James’s during the Second World War will write another chapter in the Kennedy history book?

OK, having given this the big build-up, let me take a wrecking ball to my hyperbolic question: the answer is no. But it could be that a Kennedy who is running for president as a third-party candidate this November will be decisive in who does make it to the White House.

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr was nine years old when his uncle, America’s 35th president, John F Kennedy, was murdered. He was 14 when his father met the same fate in 1968 while campaigning to win the nomination to become the 37th president.

America may have got rid of the British royal family when the US declared its independence, but it has never quite weaned itself off dynastic politics. That is why, when the name “Kennedy” appears on the list of presidential wannabes, it is hard to look the other way.

However, RFK Jr is not his father’s son politically. In fact, the Kennedy family has more or less disowned everything to do with RFK Jr’s campaign. If the name Kennedy is a synonym for liberal, Democratic Party politics, this version is steeped in the conspiracy-theory politics of the anti-vax movement that has grown so big in the US since Covid.

And this week, RFK Jr announced his running mate. Nicole Shanahan may not have as eye-catching a name as Kennedy, but she is probably a very shrewd choice. The 38-year-old is a photogenic attorney and tech entrepreneur working in Silicon Valley. She is not politically experienced, but will lend youth to his ticket. She also used to be married to Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google. So, not to put too fine a point on it, she is loaded.

And that, of course, poses the Mrs Merton question: what was it about having a billionaire on the ticket to pay for everything that first attracted you to Nicole Shanahan? Politics in America doesn’t run on ideas. The essential lubricant is cash – and huge amounts of it.

The financial firepower she brings will pay towards the organisational infrastructure that will help Kennedy to get on the ballot in all 50 states. She has already helped to fund a TV advertisement that ran during the Super Bowl last month, which repurposed John F Kennedy’s 1960 campaign ad, complete with jaunty music; a none-too-subtle attempt to play on his late uncle’s popularity. He would later feel it necessary to apologise to his family for that.

What alarms them is twofold: the views that he’s expressing, and the harm he may do to Joe Biden’s attempt at re-election. So let’s look at each.

He is right out there when it comes to his views on vaccines, and has been for the past two decades. He referred to pandemic health measures as “fascism” of a kind not seen “even in Hitler’s Germany”. He claimed that Covid-19 vaccines didn’t work for Black children because of their “kick-ass” immune systems. That struck many as being based on deeply racist assumptions.

He also claimed that the disease was designed to target Caucasians, but that Ashkenazi Jews were protected from it – and that, for many, had an antisemitic ring to it. Shanahan has also chimed in, with her suggestion that “pharmaceutical medicines” such as prescriptions and vaccines could be contributing to rising rates of autism in children.

But Kennedy has also been an environmental campaigner, with policies that might well attract Democratic support. And then there is the simple power of the name itself among Democrats. So, is the Biden camp right to be concerned? The answer to that is “Yes, but...”.

The “but” is that the greatest scepticism about Covid vaccines is to be found among Republican voters. And the sort of conspiracy theories RFK Jr advances are appealing to a lot of Trumpland. In 2021, the Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship of Virginia. Days before Virginians went to vote, there was a poll showing the Democratic candidate way out in front among the 70 per cent of people in the state who had been vaccinated. But then came the vote, and the Democrat had lost. The only explanation for this was that virtually 100 per cent of unvaccinated voters had backed Youngkin.

The polling evidence on RFK Jr is inconclusive. Early on, such evidence as it was suggested that Biden might actually be a beneficiary of Kennedy’s decision to run as an independent. Now the numbers suggest that maybe – just maybe – his candidacy will assist Trump.

What he will assuredly be is a disruptor. The green campaigner Jill Stein is planning to run again – and many believe that her campaign in 2016 could have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency.

This time round, with so much voter dissatisfaction about the prospect of a Trump/Biden rematch, independents could do very well – possibly garnering as much as 20 per cent of the vote. Of those looking at an independent run, Kennedy is by far the most popular – and with his VP announcement, he has the financial wherewithal to make an impact.

He cannot be king. That is not going to happen. But he can be kingmaker – it’s just not clear, yet, for whom.