FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — The Kennedy for President office was closed on Thursday. Opened in May, it took over a stretch of suburban strip mall between a sandwich spot and a comic book shop. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s books (“American Values,” “The Real Anthony Fauci”) and campaign merchandise were displayed in the window, along with ways to volunteer.
One day after Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally near Detroit, Kennedy’s campaigners just didn’t have a reason to be there.
“I never thought it was a big deal that we had an office,” said Walter Kristy, 69, one of Kennedy’s Michigan organizers, who did his campaign work from the home he was renting nearby. The campaign could do its work anywhere, and it was still adjusting to a new Democratic ticket. “I watched that rally last night, and she sounded pretty good,” Kristy said.
Kennedy’s Michigan campaign launched at a high point for his candidacy, and for interest in third parties. Three months ago, a majority of voters told pollsters they were unhappy with the Biden-Trump rematch. A deal with the Natural Law Party gave Kennedy instant ballot access in the state. Independent Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein were both speaking to Arab-American voters here, urging them to abandon a flagging Biden and cast a pro-Gaza protest ballot.
Then Biden ended his candidacy, Harris took over, and everything changed. Polling for third party options has crumbled since the vice president began leading the Democratic ticket. So has overall voter dissatisfaction with the options, as both Harris and Trump — her since the candidate switch, him since a failed assassination attempt — have enjoyed their highest favorable ratings of the campaign.
“The biggest factor that was unique to this election cycle was a deep distaste of both candidates, which opened the door to elevated third-party voting even in a time of record polarization,” said Lakshya Jain, an elections analyst at Split Ticket. “Kamala Harris’ ascension seems to have completely changed this dynamic.”
Kennedy’s support took the hardest hit. Before Biden dropped out, he was polling as high as 22% in a three-candidate test. Post-switch polling has put him in the mid-single digits nationally and in swing states, at the same time that a Democratic campaign to remove him from state ballots was scoring wins. On Monday, a New York judge ordered Kennedy off the state ballot, ruling that he maintained a “sham” address in the state; Kennedy said he’d appeal and file a separate federal lawsuit, which he hoped would “preempt” ballot challenges.
But the Kennedy campaign had benefited from having Biden and Trump to run against. “We have 341 million people in this country, and the two political parties produced two men who bickered over, really, irrelevancies,” he told Fox News after the Biden-Trump debate in Atlanta. Democratic excitement about their new ticket took both Republicans and third party campaigners by surprise, though some Kennedy advocates said they hadn’t seen it yet. (“The methodological fraud that goes on in polling is truly astounding,” Kennedy campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy told supporters in a call last week.)
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