By Leah Watson, The Kennedy Beacon
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has collected enough signatures to qualify for the North Carolina general election ballot through the “We The People” party.
“5 states and counting!” tweeted Kennedy’s press secretary, Stefanie Spear, on X: “We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters, and strategists ready to get the job done.” According to Kennedy’s campaign website, other states where he has gathered enough signatures to qualify are Utah, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Nevada.
However, Utah is the only state where Kennedy has officially qualified.
North Carolina is expected to be a key battleground state in the election. Former president Trump narrowly beat President Biden there in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. With third-party candidates such as Kennedy expected to take a larger share of votes away from Trump and Biden, the election might be decided in swing states where only a few thousand votes can determine the outcome.
Last month, a Marist poll found that Kennedy has 11% of the vote in North Carolina. His competition, Trump and Biden, have 46% and 43% respectively.
On April 1, Kennedy appeared on Erin Burnett’s CNN show, OutFront. In a wide-ranging interview, covered by Louis Conte in The Kennedy Beacon, he spoke about his campaign’s ballot access drive. “One hundred percent I’m going to be on the ballot in every state and the District of Columbia,” said Kennedy. “Within 8 weeks, we’re probably going to be on another 19 states [ballots],” he continued.
Kennedy praised the tireless efforts of the roughly 200,000 volunteers on his team, operating in multiple states and delivering beyond the number of signatures required, often enduring poor weather conditions to get the job done.
“In North Carolina, we had to get 13,000 signatures, we got 23,000 . . . we have a very good volunteer army out there,” Kennedy told Burnett.
Many states have ballot access deadlines and filing dates that fall later in the year, according to Ballot Access News. In some states, Kennedy was unable to begin his ballot access drive without naming a vice president. But with Nicole Shanahan on board as his running mate, Kennedy and his team are now able to begin working toward ballot access in those states.
