Unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to announce Tuesday that Nicole Shanahan, a rich legal professional and entrepreneur within the San Francisco Bay Space, can be becoming a member of his marketing campaign as his vice presidential choice, in accordance with two sources aware of the Kennedy marketing campaign’s plans.
Shanahan, who like Kennedy has by no means run for elected workplace, has contributed to his marketing campaign and his tremendous PAC.
The Kennedy marketing campaign has an announcement occasion scheduled later Tuesday in Oakland, California.
Kennedy’s choose comes at a key inflection level for his marketing campaign. Unbiased presidential candidates need to navigate totally different guidelines for getting on the poll state by state, largely involving gathering hundreds of petition signatures. However in additional than half of states, independents are required to file their nominating papers with a named working mate, and a few of these deadlines are approaching shortly.
Even because it stays a query the place precisely Kennedy will have the ability to get on the poll, he’s polling higher than different third-party candidates. And whereas the outcomes can fluctuate relying on precisely how totally different surveys ask the query, these outcomes counsel he might play a major position in crucial swing states if he is on the poll this fall.
In Arizona, Bloomberg/Morning Seek the advice of and Fox Information surveys from this month present him garnering double-digit help. In Michigan, a Quinnipiac College survey from earlier this month additionally reveals him attracting double-digit help whereas in Pennsylvania. And in North Carolina, a Marist School ballot confirmed 11% of registered voters backing Kennedy.
Kennedy thought of quite a few potential working mates throughout his vice presidential search, together with New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and TV host Mike Rowe. Rowe described his interview to NBC Information, saying Kennedy ran by key coverage positions and defended his anti-vaccine advocacy.
However finally, the sources stated Kennedy homed in on Shanahan, who beforehand was concerned within the manufacturing of an attention-grabbing Tremendous Bowl advert supporting Kennedy in February.
Shanahan instructed The New York Instances that she helped make the advert and gave $4 million to the tremendous PAC American Values 2024 final month to air it. Federal marketing campaign finance data present a $4 million contribution to the tremendous PAC on Jan. 31 from Planeta Administration LLC, which bears the same identify to her enterprise fund, Planeta Ventures.
However becoming a member of Kennedy’s ticket seems to open a pathway for Shanahan to inject her personal wealth immediately into the marketing campaign as an alternative of into an outdoor group, which might enable Kennedy to make use of the funds for key tasks like gathering petition signatures for poll entry.
Federal Election Fee guidelines counsel that vice presidential hopefuls are free to contribute their very own cash to their marketing campaign with no limitations — similar to a presidential candidate, so long as the ticket shouldn’t be in search of public funding.
A tech lawyer and entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Shanahan’s life in California has been intertwined with a few of tech’s greatest gamers.
She based ClearAccessIP, an organization that, in accordance with its web site makes use of AI expertise to assist patent holders handle their mental property. The corporate was acquired by IPwe in 2020.
She married Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2018 and divorced him in 2022. The Wall Avenue Journal reported that she had an affair with billionaire Elon Musk, however each Shanahan and Musk have denied the accusation. The Journal has stood by its reporting.
“The WSJ’s narrative that an affair with Elon Musk led to the tip of my marriage was about as correct as claiming that the physique warmth of polar bears is accountable for the melting of the Arctic ice caps,” Shanahan wrote in a 2023 essay for Individuals journal. “It felt mindless and merciless.”
Shanahan’s basis, the Bia-Echo Basis, says its mission is to “create a multiplying impact” on points Shanahan cares about, together with “reproductive longevity & equality, felony justice reform and a wholesome & livable planet.”
Shanahan has an autistic daughter and has not too long ago funded analysis into the dysfunction’s causes, and she or he instructed the New York Instances in February that she had been motivated to help Kennedy partially due to issues about kids’s well being and the surroundings, together with vaccines.
The latter merchandise has been one in every of Kennedy’s skilled causes as the pinnacle of the nation’s best-funded anti-vaccine group, Youngsters’s Well being Protection. He took a depart from the group to run for president, however has crammed his marketing campaign with anti-vaccine activists.
At his Tuesday occasion, warmup audio system included Del Bigtree, Kennedy’s communications director and a outstanding anti-vaccine activist; Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor and outspoken opponent of Covid mitigation measures; and Angela Stanton-King, a one-time GOP congressional candidate who Trump pardoned in 2020 for her position in a stolen automobile ring. In her congressional run, Stanton-King in contrast homosexual and transgender folks to pedophiles and stated the Black Lives Matter motion was “a serious cowl up for PEDOPHILIA and HUMAN TRAFFICKING.”