Kennedy could pull votes from their candidate

PHOENIX, Dec 25 (AP): Some voted for Donald Trump, others for Joe Biden. A few had never wanted anything to do with politics before they heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on a podcast or YouTube video.

Lined up outside a Phoenix wedding hall tucked between a freeway, a railroad track and a U-Haul rental center, the hundreds of people who turned out Wednesday to hear Kennedy speak shared little in common ideologically.

What united them was a deep-seated distrust - of the media, of corporations and especially of the government - and a belief that Kennedy is the only person in politics willing to tell them the truth.

"I like that he talks to us like adults," said Gilbert Limon, a 48-year-old pharmacist from Phoenix. "He tells you the majority of what you need to know. Whereas I feel like (other politicians) just give you bits and pieces to try to fit their agenda. I've had enough of that."

Voters are not enthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch, and alternatives like Kennedy or the No Labels third-party movement, which would typically be longshots, see an opening.

Kennedy's appearance in a 2024 battleground state highlights how he could influence the upcoming election in tough-to-predict ways. Allies of both Trump and Biden have expressed concerns that Kennedy's independent bid could pull votes from their candidate in next year's expected general election rematch.

Candidates from outside the Republican and Democratic parties rarely make a splash, if they can make the ballot to begin with. But third-party candidates don't usually carry Kennedy's famous last name or his existing network of supporters.

Kennedy made the stop in Phoenix as part of his laborious push to get access to the 2024 presidential ballot as an independent candidate, which he figures will require him to collect at least a million signatures across the country. Aides mingled in the crowd collecting filling up his petitions to qualify in Arizona.

Ballot access for independent and minor-party candidates is an expensive and complicated process, with each state setting its own rules for access. Campaigns usually hire people to collect signatures and often need a small army of lawyers to challenge ballot access rules and fight back against others trying to keep them off the ballot.

American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting Kennedy, has pledged to spend $15 million to help him get on the ballot in 10 states. Kennedy secured a victory in Utah, where the lieutenant governor pushed back the deadline to qualify from January to March after Kennedy filed suit.

Kennedy is a member of one of the Democratic Party's most famous families - his father was the attorney general for his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. But he's more recently built closer ties to the far right, where his conspiratorial and isolationist views are at home.

Enriqueta Porras, a 52-year-old physician from Phoenix, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020. She said she's torn about the third-party conundrum. She'd like to vote for someone she believes in like Kennedy but also wants to make sure Biden loses and may vote strategically.

"I don't want to be that person," Porras said, "but I feel like there's a lot at stake and that may just have to happen."