Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will appear on California ballot with this small, far-right party

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Monday that he has officially made the California presidential ballot after the far-right American Independent Party offered to nominate him as their candidate.

Kennedy, who announced Bay Area tech entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan as his running mate last month, celebrated the AIP nomination Monday in a five-minute YouTube video.

He acknowledged that “ironically” the AIP was originally the party of segregationist and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, “but it’s had its own rebirth before I came along.”

The AIP’s contemporary platform is staunchly conservative — its members are strong proponents of small, limited government and taxation, Christian conservative values, the Second Amendment and secure borders. In California, there were 825,981 AIP voters as of October 2023 — just under 4% of the state’s registered voters.

The counties with the highest percentage of AIP voters are rural Lassen, Modoc and Calaveras counties.

“It’s been reborn as a party that represents not bigotry and hatred, but rather compassion and unity and idealism and common sense,” said Kennedy.

The AIP approached the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign and offered to get it on the ballot in the state with the most Electoral College votes. (California has 54 electoral voters, followed by Texas’ 40 and Florida’s 30.)

“When they learned about my candidacy, they had just drafted a new charter for their reborn party where they could use their ballot line for good, for helping independent candidates to unite America without being blocked by the two-party duopoly.”

Kennedy — the nephew former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy — has raised his campaign profile as a candidate on the margins of the two major parties.

His reputation as a duopoly outsider — and anti-vaxxer — may have garnered him millions in campaign cash and endorsements from high-profile donors like Jack Dorsey and Aaron Rodgers, but it’s made it difficult to get on the actual ballot, as he is not running with a major party.

The Kennedy-Shanahan campaign sought to make it onto the California ballot with its We The People Party, but the California Secretary of State’s Office has not yet qualified it as an official party. There are only six qualified political parties in the state: American Independent, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom and Republican.

California is now the third the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket will appear on after Utah and Michigan.