Groups aligned with President Biden are challenging Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s New York state ballot petition, alleging that his campaign falsely reported his New York state residency.
The group Clear Choice says Kennedy moved to the West Coast long ago and has no real connection to the address listed on the petition: It belongs to a longtime friend, and Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign acknowledges that Kennedy never actually lived there.
The complaint, filed Thursday afternoon with the State Board of Elections, is one of more than a dozen filed with the New York State Board of Elections, some of which challenge his campaign’s signature-gathering efforts. The group provided a time-stamped copy of the complaint to The New York Times.
Electoral Commission spokeswoman Kathleen McGrath said residency determinations were “outside the minister’s jurisdiction” in the commission’s petition review.
“I would point out that the courts and judicial process would be the appropriate forum to challenge his residency,” she said.
Still, residency issues are sure to hinder Kennedy’s efforts to get out the vote in New York, and possibly elsewhere, as he uses the same address in many of the other states where he is running.
Of particular concern is California, which has 54 electoral votes and is the biggest swing state in the presidential election. Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is also from California, further complicating things for Kennedy. Under constitutional rules, a presidential candidate and running mate from the same state cannot receive that state’s electoral votes.
On May 28, the Kennedy campaign announced that it had submitted over 135,000 signatures to the New York State Board of Elections, three times the 45,000 valid signatures needed to appear on the ballot.
But records show the elections board has received 13 challenges to Kennedy’s petition, followed by more specific complaints this week.
In its challenge, Clear Choice cites real estate records, legal documents, news articles and a series of public statements proving Kennedy’s current residence is California. The group argues that because Kennedy claims to be a New York resident, his petitions list the wrong candidate’s address and therefore should be rejected in their entirety.
“Opponents have established, and will continue to establish, by clear and convincing evidence that Candidate Kennedy violated New York State law when he included his place of residence on his presidential petition and, therefore, should be barred from running for the office of President of the United States,” the groups’ lawsuit states.
Kennedy has deep ties to New York. He’s been a permanent resident of the state since 1968, when his father was assassinated in Los Angeles, according to his campaign. He was hired as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan in 1982, at age 27, and later worked for decades as an environmental lawyer for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit that protects and restores the Hudson River.
His campaign maintains that his current address in Katonah, New York, is his legal address.
“It’s where he gets his mail, where his driver’s license is registered, where his car is registered and where he is registered to vote,” the campaign said in a statement. “He pays rent to his landlord.”
Records show that Mr. Kennedy owned property in Westchester County from the mid-1980s until at least 2012, when he sold his family’s estate in Bedford, about 40 miles north of Manhattan. Earlier that year, his estranged wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, committed suicide on the property as the two were embroiled in bitter divorce proceedings.
Records show that Kennedy has since registered to vote at multiple addresses, including his sister’s and a friend’s. The New York Post first reported Kennedy’s New York residency claim in May.
Voting records show that in 2023, he changed his address from a friend’s home to another friend’s home in Westchester County. The home he most recently listed as his address is on Croton Lake Road in Katonah. The owner of that home is a woman who is listed in published reports as the wife of Timothy Haydock, a Westchester physician and longtime friend of Kennedy’s. Haydock and Kennedy served as groomsmen in each other’s weddings.
“A close friend of Mr. Kennedy invited him to move into his Croton Lake Road home, where Mr. Kennedy frequently visited,” the campaign said in a statement. “Mr. Kennedy relocated his residence in June 2023.”
According to the Daily Mail, Kennedy bought a property in Malibu, California, with his third wife, actress Cheryl Hines, in 2014. But his campaign said that while he had lived elsewhere briefly, including in California, he had always considered New York his permanent home.
“He has never claimed residency in any other state,” the campaign said. “He intends to return to New York once his wife retires from acting.”
New York State election law defines residence in the state as “the place to which an individual maintains a fixed, permanent, and principal residence and to which he or she intends to return at all times, regardless of where he or she resides temporarily.”
Kirsten Noyes and Alain Delaquerière contributed to the research.
