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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC on May 24, 2024.
CNN
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination at the party’s convention on Sunday.
Early Sunday morning, Kennedy made a surprise move to be considered as a candidate to represent the party in the 2024 presidential election, but was eliminated in the first round after receiving the support of just 19 delegates (just 2.07%).
Kennedy, who spoke at the party’s national convention in Washington, D.C., on Friday, was nominated by delegates on the convention floor on Sunday, but his candidacy was booed by other delegates.
Donald Trump was also nominated at Sunday’s convention, but Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle ruled the former president ineligible because he had not filed nomination papers. Trump was met with loud and constant boos during his speech at Saturday’s convention, especially when he called on attendees to “nominate me or at least vote for me.”
Trump received six delegate votes as a written candidate. Stormy Daniels, the porn actress whose allegations of an affair with Trump are the focus of a hush-money trial in New York, received one delegate vote for her denunciation of the former president. (Trump denies the affair and has pleaded not guilty in the case.)
Any candidate who received less than 5% of the vote was eliminated in the first round. In every subsequent round, the candidate with the fewest votes was eliminated.
After Kennedy was removed, he urged Libertarian Party members to support his campaign, even if “we may disagree on all the downstream issues.”
In a social media post on Sunday, the independent candidate said his speech at the convention was “the highlight of my campaign.”
“I was honored and surprised to wake up this morning to the huge groundswell of the Libertarian Party seeking to nominate me. If offered the nomination, I would accept it, because independents and third parties need to come together now to take our country back from a corrupt two-party system,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy told CNN last week that he would not seek the party’s nomination at this weekend’s convention.
Tim O’Brien, a Libertarian delegate from New Jersey, said he felt Kennedy did not respect the party’s values and was trying to use it for his own gain.
“A lot of people who join the party run, make a fuss and then leave, and I guarantee you, he may come here but he won’t be here after the election,” O’Brien said.
“We want someone who can say forcefully, ‘We are libertarians, we are with you,'” he added. “Trump doesn’t want us. He wants the right to vote.”
Kennedy, a former Democrat, began negotiations with Libertarian Party leaders before leaving the party to run as an independent, and met with McArdle in July and February to discuss their shared beliefs.
The Libertarian Party nomination was seen as a possible way for Kennedy to avoid ballot-getting hurdles and take advantage of the party’s access to the ballot in dozens of states — Kennedy is on the ballot in six states so far and the Libertarian Party is on the ballot in 38.
Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, told CNN on Sunday that the Libertarian Party is “more important than ever” and that “if we work together, we have a great chance of success.” Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur, made the comments in her first time answering questions from major media outlets since joining Kennedy’s campaign in March.
Shanahan had been scheduled to speak at the convention on Sunday but will not speak now that Kennedy has dropped out of the Libertarian Party nomination race, according to two people familiar with his appearances.
Kennedy told CNN after a rally in Colorado last week that his views on the environment, foreign policy and COVID-19 would appeal to Libertarian Party voters.
“My approach is a free market approach, which gets me the support of libertarians,” he said. “I’m against war, which I think is another important issue for libertarians. I support constitutional rights, and President Trump has destroyed our constitutional rights with the COVID pandemic. So I think libertarians would be more inclined to support me if they follow their philosophy.”
Trump and Kennedy have stepped up their attacks on each other in recent weeks as advisers to the former president increasingly see Kennedy, an independent, as a potential problem in an election that is likely to be decided narrowly in several states.
Kennedy’s approval rating in national surveys has reached double digits, reaching 16% in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS last month, strongly suggesting he is losing support from both President Trump and President Joe Biden.
As the threats have taken shape, so have Trump’s attacks on Kennedy, who he now frequently attacks in public and on social media. Earlier this month, Trump released a lengthy video in which he called Kennedy a “Democratic operative.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Steve Contorno and Jack Forrest contributed to this report.
