RFK Jr. won’t appear on Nevada presidential ballot after agreement with state Dems


Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not appear on Nevada’s presidential ballot as an independent candidate after reaching an agreement with the state Democrats, who had sued to kick him off the ballot.

Kennedy suspended his campaign for president last week and sought to remove himself from the ballot in swing states — presumably including Nevada — but his campaign missed the deadline to withdraw from the Nevada ballot.

That meant the only way for him to stay off the ballot was the ongoing lawsuit brought by the Nevada Democratic Party.

Both sides reached an agreement this week to drop the lawsuit and remove Kennedy from the ballot, said Todd Bice, one of the lawyers representing state Democrats.

The agreement was signed Tuesday by former Carson City District Court Judge William Maddox on behalf of Judge James Russell, who presided over the case.

The agreement outlines that Kennedy and his running mate Nicole Shanahan had filed a petition to gain ballot access, that they will now no longer appear on the ballot and that the lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back to court.

“Withdrawing our objections to the petition … was the easiest way to come off the ballot, which is what we wanted,” said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign ballot access attorney.

Kennedy, the environmental lawyer nephew of John F. Kennedy who rose to prominence for questioning vaccine safety  during the pandemic, has run a freewheeling independent campaign for president after initially running as a Democrat last year.

He made two stops in Las Vegas, one at a February rally and the other at the annual FreedomFest conference, which is billed as the “world’s largest gathering of free minds.”

On Tuesday, Trump named Kennedy as a co-chair on his transition team.

The electoral implications of Kennedy’s removal are not immediately clear. When third party candidates are included, former President Donald Trump’s lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada increases from 1.4 percent to 2.2 percent, according to data from poll aggregator RealClearPolitics. Kennedy has hovered around 5 percent of the Nevada vote share.

An internal campaign memo from Trump’s pollster last week — released after Kennedy endorsed Trump — found that Kennedy supporters supported Trump over Harris in Nevada more than any other swing state. 

The data, which did not include a source, found 66 percent of Kennedy supporters in Nevada breaking for Trump and 16 percent backing Harris, with the rest undecided.