Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not appear on Nevada’s presidential ballot as an independent candidate after reaching an agreement with the state Democrats, who had sued to kick him off the ballot.
Kennedy suspended his campaign for president last week and sought to remove himself from the ballot in swing states — presumably including Nevada — but his campaign missed a deadline to withdraw from the Nevada ballot. That meant the only way for him to stay off the ballot was the ongoing lawsuit brought by the Nevada Democratic Party.
Both sides reached an agreement this week to drop the lawsuit and remove Kennedy from the ballot, said Todd Bice, one of the lawyers representing state Democrats. The agreement has been handed to Carson City District Court Judge James Russell, who is presiding over the case, and its approval is considered a formality at this point, Bice said.
The agreement outlines that Kennedy and his running mate Nicole Shanahan had filed a petition to gain ballot access, that they will now no longer appear on the ballot and that the lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back to court.
“Withdrawing our objections to the petition … was the easiest way to come off the ballot, which is what we wanted,” said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign ballot access attorney.
The Nevada Democratic Party led the effort to kick Kennedy off the ballot on the grounds that his affiliation with other political parties violates the state’s legal requirements for independent candidates. The party did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Kennedy’s removal from the ballot marks the presumed end to a monthslong, chaotic legal battle surrounding his ballot access in Nevada.
His initial ballot petition was considered invalid for not including a running mate, as required under Nevada law — which his campaign said amounted to corruption because it was operating on faulty advice from the secretary of state’s office — and his campaign is still engaged in a now effectively moot lawsuit related to that decision. Its second petition was rescinded after misspelling “United States” and the third petition gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, which the campaign celebrated as having defeated an “attempt to block ballot access in Nevada.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
