Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Secures Spot on Texas Ballot

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated Monday that he submitted over double the required number of signatures to gain ballot access in Texas for the November election.

Kennedy and his campaign announced that he and running mate Nicole Shanahan delivered 245,572 signatures to the Texas Secretary of State’s office on Monday.

If confirmed, Texas becomes the sixth state that the duo has qualified for, joining Utah, Michigan, California, Delaware, and Oklahoma. Additionally, the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign mentioned that they have collected enough signatures to qualify for eight more states: New Hampshire, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio.

“It’s official. Kennedy-Shanahan on Texas ballot! By collecting nearly a quarter of a million signatures in just two months, the campaign has demonstrated its ability to meet the toughest ballot access requirement in the country,” Kennedy’s campaign press secretary Stephanie Spear said in a tweet on Monday.

The campaign claimed that RFK is the first independent candidate to qualify for the ballot in Texas since Pat Buchanan in 2000.

A March Marist survey showed RFK Jr. garnering 15% support in Texas, while Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump led with 48% of the vote. President Joe Biden stood at 36%, according to the poll.

Nationally, Kennedy is polling at 10.8% support in the five-way average, as per RealClearPolitics. Trump leads Biden by 2.7 points in that assessment.

“I still think RFK Jr. could take more from the Republican side, and I think that’s why Donald Trump’s criticizing him,” former Republican Florida congressman turned MSNBC political commentator David Jolly commented Saturday. “He is a MAGA enthusiast; he’s a vaccine skeptic. He denies science, he changes his stance on abortion, and even his own VP candidate can’t keep up with his position day to day on critical issues going into November.”

Kennedy mentioned in an interview last week that women should have the right to get an abortion, “even if it’s full-term,” a statement that surprised Shanahan.

“My understanding is that he absolutely supports limits on abortion, and we’ve discussed this. I don’t believe, I don’t know where that came from,” she said.

Also on Monday, Kennedy filed a lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta, alleging election interference. Kennedy and a super PAC that backs him, American Values 2024, claim that Meta obstructed a political advertisement, a 30-minute video about his life.

Kennedy alleges that Meta censored the video by taking it down and preventing users on its platforms from viewing, sharing, or posting a link to it. The lawsuit stated that Meta began censoring the video “within minutes.”

Information from Reuters was utilized in this report.