RFK Jr.'s vice presidential candidate drops $8M more into campaign

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate is making an $8 million cash infusion into their independent bid for the White House.

The contribution from Nicole Shanahan, which the tech attorney and entrepreneur announced at a comedy show and campaign fundraiser on Wednesday night in Nashville, Tennessee, is more than double what the campaign raised from donors in March, the latest month available for campaign financial disclosures.

“This isn’t just about funding our own campaign,” Shanahan said in a press release on Thursday. “We want to liberate presidential elections from the grip of the existing two-party duopoly, and revitalize American democracy.”

Campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy said that the new funding will cover all of the campaign’s ballot access expenses. As an independent campaign, Kennedy must collect signatures in each state to get his name on the ballot.

Shanahan’s investment comes at a crucial time for the campaign. Kennedy may be edged out of the first presidential debate in June. The debate, hosted by CNN, has a polling requirement of at least 15 percent in select surveys and requires candidates to be on the ballot in enough states to earn a majority of Electoral College votes by June 20, seven days before the debate.

The Kennedy campaign is officially on the ballot in four states. It claims to have gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in many more, but many states haven’t started their review process yet. Most deadlines to certify are in the late summer, after the first debate.

Shanahan's investment will help the campaign's overall bottom line: The campaign reported significant debt in the last two monthly filing reports. The financial strain of Kennedy’s debt coupled with regularly high spending is being abated by Shanahan’s support.

Shanahan also gave $2 million in March, the same month she joined the ticket, bringing her total investment to the campaign to $10 million. This is in addition to $4.5 million that Shanahan previously donated to two different super PACs backing Kennedy earlier in the campaign.

Shanahan, aware that her financial backing has attracted criticism that her main value to the campaign is her personal wealth, addressed the issue directly at Wednesday's fundraiser.

“I think I know what they’re going to say — they’re going to say Bobby only picked me for my money,” Shanahan said during her donation announcement, according to the New York Times.

The first-time candidate and former Democratic donor was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, but he filed for divorce in 2021 (the settlement is sealed), and Shanahan previously sold her own patent technology company.