Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has added North Carolina to the expanding list of battleground states in which it has qualified for the ballot in November.
The independent candidate’s campaign says it now has enough signatures to list Kennedy as a White House contender through the “We The People” party, gathering 23,000 pledges of support in the purple state.
“We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters, and strategists ready to get the job done,” Kennedy’s campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear said Monday in a statement announcing the news.
North Carolina is considered an important swing state for all parties in 2024, including a potential third-party ticket. Former President Trump won the state by just more than 1 percentage point in 2020, giving Republicans a slight edge and inspiring Democrats to try to win it this cycle.
The addition of the Tar Heel state brings Kennedy’s ballot qualified total to five states so far, including Utah, New Hampshire and Hawaii. In Nevada, he cleared the signature threshold prior to meeting the requirement of having a declared vice president alongside his name, raising questions about whether he will have to regather signatures of support.
Kennedy’s team is hoping the pick of Nicole Shanahan as his running mate will give more voters a reason to lend their names to his ballot access push. Shanahan’s background as a tech lawyer who was once married to the co-founder of Google is seen as a tactical asset to his campaign’s ballot access strategy.