A gaggle aligned with President Biden is difficult Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s New York poll petition, saying his marketing campaign lied about his New York residency.
The group, Clear Alternative, says he way back moved to the West Coast and has just about no connection to the tackle listed on his petitions — an tackle of a longtime good friend, the place Mr. Kennedy’s impartial presidential marketing campaign acknowledges he has by no means really lived.
The criticism, filed with the state Board of Elections on Thursday afternoon, is considered one of greater than a dozen filed with New York’s board of elections, a few of which object to his marketing campaign’s signature-gathering efforts. The group offered a time-stamped copy of the criticism to The New York Occasions.
A Board of Elections spokeswoman, Kathleen McGrath, mentioned a willpower of residency can be “exterior the ministerial scope” of the board’s evaluate of petitions.
“I’ll observe that the courts and a judicial continuing can be the suitable venue for difficult his residency,” she mentioned.
Nonetheless, residency challenges are sure to stall Mr. Kennedy’s poll entry push in New York, and presumably elsewhere: He has used the identical tackle in various different states the place he’s submitting to run.
A selected concern is California, whose 54 electoral votes make it the most important prize within the presidential election. Mr. Kennedy’s operating mate, Nicole Shanahan, additionally lists California as her dwelling, which provides one other complication for Mr. Kennedy. Below a Constitutional quirk, presidential and vice-presidential candidates who hail from the identical state are ineligible to obtain its electoral votes.
On Could 28, the Kennedy marketing campaign mentioned it had turned in additional than 135,000 signatures with New York elections officers — thrice the required 45,000 legitimate signatures to get on the poll.
However the Board of Elections acquired 13 objections to the Kennedy petition, information present; these have been adopted up this week with extra particular complaints.
In its challenges, Clear Alternative cites property information, authorized filings, information articles and a sequence of public statements establishing Mr. Kennedy’s present dwelling as California. As a result of he claimed residency in New York, the group contends, his petitions checklist the unsuitable tackle for the candidate and subsequently ought to all be thrown out.
“The objectors have confirmed and, will proceed to show, by clear and convincing proof that candidate Kennedy violated New York State regulation when he listed the petition residence on his presidential petitions, and subsequently candidate Kennedy needs to be barred from looking for the general public workplace of president of the USA,” the group’s criticism says.
Mr. Kennedy has deep ties to New York. His marketing campaign says he has been a everlasting resident of the state since 1968, the 12 months his father was assassinated in Los Angeles. In 1982, at age 27, he was employed as an assistant district lawyer in Manhattan. He later labored for many years as an environmental lawyer for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit group devoted to defending and restoring the Hudson River.
His marketing campaign insists his present tackle in Katonah, N.Y., is legitimately his official tackle.
“He receives mail there. His driver’s license is registered there. His car is registered there. His voting registration is from there,” the marketing campaign mentioned in a press release. “He pays hire to the proprietor.”
Mr. Kennedy owned property in Westchester County from the mid-Nineteen Eighties till a minimum of 2012, when he bought a household property in Bedford, about 40 miles north of Manhattan, information present. Earlier that 12 months, his estranged spouse, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide on the property whereas the 2 have been locked in bitter divorce proceedings.
Since then Mr. Kennedy has been registered to vote at a number of addresses, together with one belonging to his sister and others owned by mates, information present. The New York Put up first reported on Mr. Kennedy’s declare of New York residency in Could.
In 2023, he switched his listed tackle from the home of 1 good friend to a different in Westchester County, voting information present. The house he gave most just lately as his tackle is on Croton Lake Street in Katonah. Its listed proprietor is a girl described in printed studies because the spouse of Mr. Kennedy’s longtime good friend Timothy Haydock, a Westchester physician. Mr. Haydock and Mr. Kennedy every served as greatest man within the different’s wedding ceremony.
“Mr. Kennedy’s greatest good friend invited him to maneuver into his Croton Lake Street residence during which Mr. Kennedy had been a frequent visitor,” the marketing campaign mentioned in its assertion. “Mr. Kennedy transferred his residence in June 2023.”
Mr. Kennedy purchased property in Malibu, Calif., in 2014 along with his third spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, in keeping with The Every day Mail. However Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign mentioned he has at all times thought of New York his everlasting dwelling, although he has lived elsewhere quickly, together with in California.
“He has by no means claimed every other state as a residency,” the marketing campaign mentioned. “He intends to maneuver again to New York after his spouse retires from appearing.”
New York election regulation states that residence within the state is outlined as “that place the place an individual maintains a set, everlasting and principal dwelling and to which he, wherever quickly situated, at all times intends to return.”
Kirsten Noyes and Alain Delaquérière contributed analysis.
