DNC Intensifies Effort To Attack RFK Jr., Filing FEC Complaint
Amid their continued effort to prevent independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from destroying President Joe Biden’s chances at re-election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has found yet another avenue to attack Kennedy — filing a complaint accusing him of a “ballot access scheme.”
Kennedy, who is running for president as an independent after the DNC hindered his efforts at running in the Democrat primary against Biden, is being accused of illegally coordinating with a Super PAC supporting his presidential campaign.
In the complaint to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), the DNC claimed that the Super PAC “American Values 2024” is violating federal law by working to collect signatures to get Kennedy’s name on the November ballot in key states — noting that the Super PAC will have to “integrate their expenses” with Kennedy’s campaign in ways that violate federal election rules.
The DNC claimed that the rules in many states — such as Arizona, Illinois and Michigan — require candidates or their campaigns to be the only ones collecting ballot signatures, arguing in the complaint that Kennedy’s campaign would have to violate federal rules in order to meet state requirements.
“They simply cannot comply with federal law and state law at the same time,” DNC legal counsel Bob Lenhard argued during a conference call with reporters.
The DNC also alleged that donations from major supporters of former president and current GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump — including Tim Mellon, who gave American Values 2024 a $15 million donation last year — indicate that Trump supporters are using Kennedy’s candidacy to hurt Biden’s chances at re-election.
During the conference call with reporters, the DNC claimed that “Trump and his megadonors are propping up RFK Jr. as a stocking horse.”
While Kennedy and his campaign have not commented on the FEC complaint, American Values 2024 has released a statement condemning the complaint as the DNC playing “political games” — noting that it has been working independently from Kennedy’s campaign to put his name on the ballot in 12 states.
“The DNC wants to deny millions of people their basic constitutional voting rights in a relentless onslaught against democracy,” Tony Lyons, the Super PAC’s co-founder, explained in the statement, arguing that “the Biden administration and the DNC clearly find democracy inconvenient, want to stifle any dissenting opinions and don’t believe that their candidate can win a free, open and fair election.”
Meanwhile, even left-leaning news outlets like Politico have acknowledged that the FEC complaint is part of Democrats’ efforts to target Kennedy and is likely going to be dismissed.
“The complaint is unlikely to go anywhere — the commission is evenly divided among the two major parties and frequently deadlocks on enforcement questions — but it signals that national Democrats are dialing up their efforts to target Kennedy, the current leading non-major party presidential candidate, over fears that he may siphon votes away from President Joe Biden in this year’s election,” the outlet reported.
