‘Sham party’: Democratic PAC accuses RFK Jr. backers of misleading NC petition signers
A Democratic super PAC is accusing backers of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign of misleading voters in their attempts to get Kennedy on North Carolina’s ballot.
In a challenge the group says it has filed with the State Board of Elections, it says people who signed petitions for ballot access were made to believe they were signing to directly put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the general election ballot in November. Their signatures were in fact collected in support of a spot on the ballot for a new political party, We The People, which would be expected to put Kennedy forward as its nominee.
“It is profoundly misleading for We The People to tell North Carolina voters that by creating the party, they are placing Mr. Kennedy on the ballot when in fact, they are doing both much more, and much less,” attorneys representing the super PAC, Clear Choice Action, said in a letter to the Board of Elections.
The petitions were “an unlawful effort” by Kennedy to “evade the requirements for an unaffiliated candidacy by creating a sham political party,” the lawyers wrote.
The PAC also faulted the new party for misstating the address of a leader on the petition sheets.
“Any signatures collected on these facially invalid petitions are themselves invalid,” the attorneys wrote. “As a result, We The People lacks a sufficient number of valid signatures to meet the 13,865 valid signature threshold.”
In signed forms that Clear Choice Action filed with the board, 20 people who signed the petitions requested to withdraw their signatures, many noting that they believed they were signing a petition to place Kennedy’s name on the ballot and “not to create a new political party.”
“At the time of my signature, I did not know that the petition was for the purpose of qualifying We the People as a political party in North Carolina,” is among the choices for petitioners to check on the forms in describing their reasoning for withdrawing signatures.
Reached for a response Tuesday, the Kennedy campaign said it would consider commenting, but had not responded by the time this story was published.
Pete Kavanaugh, the founder of Clear Choice Action, is a former aide to President Joe Biden, the Washington Post reported.
The News & Observer reported last week that Clear Choice Action had contacted voters who signed the We the People petitions, along with those who had signed petitions for a party backing another independent presidential candidate, Cornel West.
Both petitions are expected to go before the elections board later this month.
A firm representing Clear Choice Action has targeted third-party candidates and campaigns before. The Elias Group, a Washington-based firm with ties to major Democratic politicians, submitted several complaints to the State Board of Elections in 2022 seeking to prevent the Green Party from being on the ballot, as previously reported by The News & Observer.
Because Democrats have tried before to block third-party presidential campaigns, one supporter of putting West and Kennedy on the ballot wasn’t surprised when he got texts from Clear Choice Action about his signatures, he told The N&O recently.
“The Democratic Party is going to be really focusing and putting a lot of effort into trying to keep third party and independent candidates off the ballot,” said Matthew Hoh, who ran for U.S. Senate as a Green Party candidate in 2022.
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