Well, that was fast.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s short-lived attempt to become the Libertarian nominee for president flamed out even faster than it started, as he received support from a paltry 19 delegates, or 2.07%, at the party’s DC convention Sunday, sending him home in the first round.
Earlier in the day, Kennedy, 70, was unexpectedly nominated from the convention floor by a delegate, the announcement swiftly drawing waves of boos from the crowd in what became a harbinger of his embarrassing showing.
On Friday, he delivered a gloves-off speech to convention delegates in which he ripped former President Donald Trump, 77, for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and failing to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or anti-surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden during his administration.
Trump’s name was also put forth on the convention floor to be the party’s standard bearer, but the notion was quickly extinguished by Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who declared him ineligible because he failed to submit nominating papers.
Trump spoke before the raucous delegates Saturday afternoon, enduring boos mixed with “We want Trump” chants, which reached a zenith when he urged the crowd to nominate him.
As the jeers and cheers rang out, the former president tagged his request for the nomination with, “Only if you want to win. Maybe you don’t want to win.”
He went on to receive six delegate votes as a write-in candidate. One delegate, in a snide reference to Trump’s ongoing NYC hush money trial, wrote in “Stormy Daniels,” the adult film star whose alleged trysts with the ex-commander in chief were the catalyst for this round of his legal woes.
Under convention rules, candidates who received less than 5% of the vote were knocked out of contention in the first round.
Kennedy had been meeting with Libertarian Party officials since last summer, in part hoping to ride their ballot coattails in November. The eventual Libertarian candidate will be on the ballot in 38 states, compared to just six for Kennedy so far.
Kennedy, a former Democrat who left the party in October to seek the nomination for president as an independent, received 14% support in a recent Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters this week.
However, that same poll showed his supporters were far more likely to abandon him than any other candidate between now and Election Day.
