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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - son of the late US Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy - filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for president in the 2024 election, he announced Friday, April 7.
The 69-year-old will run as a Democrat, according to his FEC filing. He said that he will officially kick off his campaign in Boston on Wednesday, April 19.
“I am grateful for the outpouring of support,” Kennedy said on Twitter. “Help me in my bid to win in 2024 + reunite America.”
Kennedy, who grew up at his famous family’s homes in Virginia and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and formerly lived in New York, in Bedford in Westchester County, had teased a possible run during a speech in New Hampshire on March 3, saying he was “thinking about it.”
“I’ve passed the biggest hurdle which is that my wife (actress Cheryl Hines) has green-lighted it,” he said at the time.
A former assistant district attorney in New York City, Kennedy spent over 30 years as an adjunct environmental law professor at Pace University School of Law in White Plains.
He also spent decades as a senior attorney for the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, and as a board member and attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper.
In recent years, Kennedy has sparked controversy after pushing conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism, and railing against the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2011, he founded the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit activist group known for anti-vaccine propaganda.
In April 2019, a New York Supreme Court judge tossed out a lawsuit brought by the nonprofit protesting mandatory measle-mumps-rubella vaccinations that were imposed by New York City.
Kennedy’s views on vaccines led to his family publishing an essay in Politico in 2019, when the US found itself dealing with one of the worst measles outbreaks in years.
“The (World Health Organization) has listed vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health in 2019," reads the essay, which was written by Kenendy’s sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, his brother, Joseph P. Kennedy II, and his niece, Maeve Kennedy McKean.
"Most cases of preventable diseases occur among unvaccinated children because parents have chosen not to vaccinate, have delayed vaccination, have difficulty accessing vaccines, or the children were too young to receive the vaccines,” they continued.
“These tragic numbers are caused by the growing fear and mistrust of vaccines — amplified by internet doomsayers. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Joe and Kathleen’s brother and Maeve’s uncle—is part of this campaign to attack the institutions committed to reducing the tragedy of preventable infectious diseases.
Kennedy will become the fourth member of his family to run for president. Here is the chronological order:
- Uncle John F. Kennedy beat Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 election,
- Father was assassinated in June 1968 in Los Angeles the night he won the California primary.
- Another uncle -- and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy -- lost the Democratic primary to incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
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