Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was eliminated in the first round of the Libertarian Party convention on Sunday after receiving support from just 19 delegates, or 2.07%, during his brief bid to become the party’s presidential contender.
Candidates that get fewer than five percent of the vote in the first round are eliminated under convention rules.
Kennedy, 70, surprisingly, had been nominated from the convention floor earlier in the day by a delegate; the news quickly caused a surge of jeers from the audience, which constituted a prelude to his disastrous performance.
In a speech he gave to convention delegates on Friday, Kennedy criticized former President Donald Trump, 77, for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and for not pardoning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or anti-surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden while he was in office.
On the convention floor, the former president’s name was also floated as the party’s standard bearer. Trump appeared before the convention on Saturday afternoon, facing both boos and “We want Trump” shouts, to which the former president responded with, “Only if you want to win”.
However, Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle swiftly put an end to the idea, stating that the Republican candidate was disqualified due to his failure to file nomination papers. This would imply that while Trump presented himself as a potential candidate for the Libertarian Party, his appearance at the Convention was only for publicity purposes–little more than a photo-op.
RFK Jr. had been holding meetings with representatives of the Libertarian Party throughout the summer, partly with the intention of riding their wave of support in the November election.
In a recent nationwide Quinnipiac University survey of registered voters, Kennedy, a former Democrat who quit the party in October to run for president as an independent, garnered 14% of the vote. As opposed to Kennedy’s current total of six states, the ultimate Libertarian nominee will be on the ballot in 38 states.
