RFK Jr. campaign pushes to get him on NY ballot. What do NY backers say about his chances?

Paul Jaffe is a lifelong Democrat who cast his ballot for Biden in 2020, though with little enthusiasm.

Now, the 72-year-old business consultant from Rockland County is dead-set on a different presidential candidate since going to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign kickoff in Boston last April. And this week, he's set to lead an evening gathering at a Rockland library to train other Kennedy supporters for an arduous task ahead.

Their mission? Helping gather tens of thousands of signatures to get RFK Jr. on the ballot in New York.

"I think he's a wonderful candidate," Jaffe said. "And I'm working, praying and hoping for him to be elected."

Starting Tuesday, a legion of volunteers backing an outsider longshot over the major-party choices are poised to fan out across the state with petitions in hand to buttonhole voters. Kennedy needs 45,000 names to qualify as an independent for the November election, but in practice his troops must get thousands more to make up for those sure to be invalidated for flaws found by the other campaigns.

Nationally, Kennedy is a major wild card in a rematch between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump that could be decided by close margins in a handful of swing states. His campaign aims to get on the ballot in all 50 states and claims to have collected enough signatures so far for six. It has until May 28 to file its New York petition.

Only one early poll has tested how Kennedy might fare in heavily Democratic New York, where Biden crushed Trump by 23 percentage points in 2020. A Siena College poll of New York voters in February found Biden leading Trump by 12 points in a two-race and by 10 points with Kennedy and fellow independent Cornel West added to the field. In a four-way contest, 13% of surveyed voters picked Kennedy.

Kennedy's New York roots

Perhaps best known — and often rebuked — on the national stage for his crusades to question the safety of vaccines, Kennedy has a long record in New York as an environmental activist that may boost his candidacy there. Starting in the 1980s, he worked for decades as an attorney with the nonprofit Riverkeeper to force polluters to clean the Hudson River and other waterways. He lived in Westchester County, where he also led an environmental litigation clinic that he started at Pace University School of Law.

His appeal to a diverse band of disaffected voters has drawn attacks from both the left and right. Democrats have been particularly critical, accusing Kennedy of serving as a "stalking horse" for Trump. Trump allies, in turn, have funded Kennedy's campaign and want to elevate his more liberal views to siphon support from Biden, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Kennedy's supporters bristle at dismissals of him as an anti-vax kook — and a spoiler with no chance of winning. In interviews last week with the USA Today Network, New Yorkers ready to hit the ground for Kennedy's petition drive raved about him as a refreshing antidote to a corrupt political system, and spoke sincerely about their belief that he could prevail in November.

What's Kennedy's appeal?

Clay Gruber, an independent voter from Rochester, sat out the 2016 election, and he thinks he voted for Trump in 2020 — he can't recall for sure — because he wanted political change and saw Trump as a "disrupter."

Now he views Trump as a "harmful person," and Biden as a threat to the First Amendment due to claims of censorship of conservative views on social media. Last Wednesday, Gruber led a group of Kennedy supporters at a mini-rally in Rochester, where they promoted their candidate before the petition drive by dangling a Kennedy banner from an Interstate 490 overpass.

Gruber, who is 67 and a semi-retired painting contractor, said his distrust in the government and desire for change drew him to Kennedy, as did the candidate's environmental success. He believes polls showing Kennedy a distant third — one by Marist College this month had Kennedy at 11% nationally — are undercounting his support, particularly among young people.

"I think he can do it, I really do," Gruber said, adding that Kennedy's movement will outlast the race, whatever the outcome.

Jaffe, the Rockland supporter, ticked off a host of reasons he likes Kennedy: his dedication to clean government and the environment; his eagerness to end the Ukraine war and have the U.S. set a "positive example" abroad; his emphasis on controlling the nation's ballooning debt; his railing against the "corporate capture" of government.

In short, Kennedy champions everything Jaffe cares about. He also believes Kennedy is smarter and better informed than Biden and Trump and can beat them both — if only the news media would end its "brownout" on covering his campaign, Jaffe noted.

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Will Kennedy be a spoiler in the race?

Suspicion among Democrats that Kennedy could serve as a spoiler for Trump were fanned by a CNN story last week about someone working for Kennedy's campaign in New York. The story quoted what it said was a since-deleted online video of campaign aide Rita Palma talking to a group of Republicans about getting Kennedy on the ballot in New York to help Trump win the state.

“The only way that Trump can even, remote possibility of taking New York is if Bobby is on the ballot," the article quoted her as saying.

Kennedy's campaign distanced itself from Palma's remarks and announced two days later that it had fired her.

The Siena poll of New York voters in February found Kennedy had supporters in both parties and — in greater numbers — among independent voters. Those who backed him accounted for 10% of Democrats who were polled, 11% of Republicans and 21% of independents.

For Andi Novick, a retired litigator who's coordinating Kennedy campaign volunteers in Dutchess and Ulster counties, questioning whether he's likely to siphon more voters from Biden or Trump is a misguided way to view the race. From her standpoint, Kennedy is a candidate on an equal footing, offering voters a genuine alternative.

"It's about having a choice," she said. "It's about winning fair and square."

Born the same year as the 70-year-old Kennedy, Novick is a lifelong Democrat who's disenchanted with her party and yearns for an earlier version — the party of Kennedy's father (attorney general, senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy) and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy represents that same Democratic spirit, in her view.

She also lauds Kennedy for his work on behalf of the Hudson, which runs near her home in Rhinebeck.

"That man is responsible for cleaning up that river," she said.

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What are Kennedy's NY volunteers doing?

Collecting 45,000 valid signatures in New York is a tall order, though not the biggest lift for Kennedy's campaign. According to its website, Texas requires more than 113,000 names for its ballot and Florida demands 145,000.

More than 100 signature-gathering stops have been scheduled around the state over the six-week petition period, including a kickoff in Kingston on Tuesday, according to the posted schedule. Volunteers will stand outside various Long Island theaters during shows on almost 40 dates. They'll be at the Metro-North train station in Pearl River. Outside Yankee Stadium during a game. On five days, they'll be on the SUNY New Paltz campus, asking students and faculty for signatures.

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Karl Hagstrom is spearheading the effort in Westchester County.

Hagstrom, 64, a retired New York City police officer who works in private security in Manhattan, said he admires Kennedy's intelligence and work with Riverkeeper, and agrees with his vaccine criticism. He differs on some other stances but sees that as normal, and he encourages others to weigh Kennedy's candidacy more carefully than media sound bites.

Hagstrom considers himself a "conservative at heart" and says he voted for Trump in 2016, though not in 2020. He views both Biden and Trump as unpalatable and thinks the race is so unpredictable that Kennedy has a shot.

"I'm not in this to be a spoiler," he said. "I'm in this because I believe in the candidate and I think there's a pathway to victory."

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: 2024 presidential election: RFK Jr. campaign pushing to get on ballot