Dozens of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s former colleagues at an environmental advocacy group have demanded he drop out of the 2024 race to “honor our planet” — fearing that his campaign will sweep Donald Trump back into office.
The activists’ grievances with the 70-year-old Kennedy will be aired in an ad sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund that will run in Sunday newspapers in the battleground states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Kennedy, the son of the late attorney general and senator from New York Robert F. Kennedy, worked as a senior attorney at the NRDC for nearly three decades.
The ad buy was first reported by the New York Times.
“We have spent our careers fighting to protect the planet and its people. As current and former leadership and board members of the NRDC Action Fund, as well as former colleagues of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., we have one message for him: Honor our planet, drop out,” read the ads, placed to coincide with Monday’s Earth Day.
The Democrat-turned-independent is polling in or near double digits and is the top third-party candidate challenging Biden and Trump. Both rivals have noticed Kennedy’s potential to steal their supporters come November and their teams have worked to dissuade voters from his platform.
Kennedy, 70, has said he intends to take votes away from both Trump and Biden, calling himself a “spoiler” for both candidates.
“Kennedy is playing a dangerous spoiler role that could benefit Trump,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the NRDC Action Fund.
“Joe Biden is the real environmental candidate in this race. He has taken more climate action than any US President in history. Meanwhile Kennedy’s campaign staffers have made clear they are trying to syphon votes away from the President. Polling shows he has no path to the White House, so if Kennedy is serious about protecting the planet, the time to drop out is now.”
The ad specifically mentions Trump saying last month that Kennedy is “great for MAGA” and the insurgent’s campaign website arguing “climate change is being used to control us through fear.”
“The RFK, Jr. I knew as a colleague is not the same person I see today,” said Liz Barratt-Brown, one of Kennedy’s former colleague who signed the open letter. “We feel betrayed by him and what he is espousing. He is using his environmental credentials to sell a dark and conspiratorial brand of politics. It’s heartbreaking. If he loves the planet the way he did as my former colleague, he cannot open the door to another Trump Administration.”
RFK Jr.’s website claims he will be the “best environmental president in American history,” and hits both Biden and Trump on the issue.
“In contrast with Kennedy’s lifelong efforts to fight corporate corruption and contamination of our environment, Presidents Trump and Biden both appointed corporate lobbyists to fill federal regulatory agencies. Trump rolled back dozens of environmental rules for big polluters, and Biden has given corporations billions of dollars of taxpayer money for false environmental solutions,” the website reads.
The NRDC Action Fund ad is the latest attack on the Kennedy campaign.
On Monday, Trump-supporting Make America Great Again Inc. launched a website entitled “Radical F-ing Kennedy” outlining his far-left policies, while on Thursday, over a dozen of Kennedy’s family members — including several of his siblings — stood behind Biden in Philadelphia and endorsed the president for re-election.
The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Post Friday.
