Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy chooses Northern California native as VP pick

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced tech lawyer and major campaign supporter Nicole Shanahan, 38, as his Vice Presidential running mate Tuesday afternoon in Oakland.

“I wanted a vice president who shared my passion for healthy, wholesome foods, chemical free, from regenerative agriculture, from good soils,” he said. “And I found exactly the right person.”

Shanahan, who previously contributed to President Joe Biden’s campaign, has been a supporter of Kennedy’s presidential bid since he announced he was running as a Democrat in April 2023. She helped pay for and plan his $4 million Super Bowl ad, of which other members of the Kennedy family disapproved.

The attorney, tech entrepreneur and philanthropist was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. She founded the Bia-Echo Foundation, which supports “reproductive longevity” as well as criminal justice reform efforts and the climate crisis.

“She has used, over the past several years, cutting edge technology including AI to calculate the catastrophic health consequences of toxins in our soil, our air, our water and our food,” Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, said Tuesday.

A Wall Street Journal story accused Shanahan of having an affair with Elon Musk in 2022, which Shanahan and Musk both strongly disputed. Shanahan wrote an essay for People Magazine last year outlining the career setbacks, stress and anxiety the rumors caused.

“I can’t think of anything worse for a professional woman’s career than publicly shaming her for a sexual act,” she wrote.

She has said in the past that she is not an “anti-vaxxer,” but “does wonder about vaccine injuries.” After receiving the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and subsequent booster vaccines, she told Newsweek that she’s suffered “significant health issues” afterward, and wonders if they are related.

“From our first meeting,” Kennedy said, “Nicole’s intellectual capacity left me awestruck. I knew right then I wanted her as my vice president and I knew America was going to fall in love with her.”

Kennedy, known among supporters as a “truth warrior” and disrupter of mainstream politics, rose to political prominence for his environmental advocacy.

But it was his COVID-19 vaccine skepticism and support for debunked “cures” such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, that endeared him to followers in a post-lockdown political landscape. Some of his speeches have been removed from YouTube and other platforms over medical misinformation claims, while his supporters claim he’s being censored for speaking the truth. He seeks to represent independents tired of a two-party system, and his campaign slogan, Declare Your Independence, says it all.

The nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr. has had a circuitous path to the presidency, earning endorsements outside of the typical political institutions, namely from COVID-19 vaccine skeptics such as NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former NBA player John Stockton, and podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as tech entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter (now X), and David Sacks, the former Chief Operating Officer of PayPal.

Choosing a political outsider as his running mate cemented Kennedy’s nontraditional campaign — and may help to boost his profile.

Recent polls show him with just 9.9% of predicted votes in November, but having a young woman of color beside him might help those low numbers.

Kennedy believes Shanahan “will speak for millennials and Gen Z.”

She’s “someone who cares about healing our children, protecting our environment, restoring our soils, and getting the chemicals out of our food, and who understands how technology will either enslave us or give us a path back to freedom and prosperity.”

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, said via a campaign spokesperson after Kennedy’s announcement that he is “a far-left radical.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a far-left radical that supports reparations, backs the Green New Deal, and wants to ban fracking,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for Make America Great Again Inc.

“It’s no surprise he would pick a Biden donor leftist as his running mate.”