Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be listed on the South Carolina presidential ballot by running under the banner of one of the state’s lesser-known political movements — the Alliance Party.
The nomination means the long-shot candidate and member of the Kennedy dynasty will be included on thousands of South Carolina voting machines in November as his effort to make it on all 50 state ballots nationally has otherwise been slow in materializing.
South Carolina Alliance Party co-founder Jim Rex said the group agreed to accept Kennedy as their nominee about a week ago and that he was nominated by its leadership via conference call.
Rex said the Kennedy camp came to them seeking their ballot spot and that there were several discussions before they agreed to accept him as their pick.
“It turned out to be a great fit for the Alliance Party,” Rex said.
Kennedy will run only under the Alliance label, as “fusion” candidacies — in which candidates can represent several parties at once — is no longer legal in the state.
“It will be just us,” said Rex, national chair emeritus of The Alliance Party.
The nominating ticket also includes Kennedy’s choice for vice president, attorney Nicole Shanahan of Silicon Valley.
Being the Alliance nominee means Kennedy’s effort to get on the South Carolina ballot as an independent candidate here most likely will be suspended.
In March, he submitted a petition containing the signatures of 19,000 registered South Carolina voters; local county election offices are still in the process of confirming those names. That process would be halted if the Kennedy campaign requests by letter.
A call to the campaign was not immediately returned May 31.
Only 10,000 confirmed names are needed to gain ballot access as an independent in the state.
“I proudly accept the Alliance Party’s nomination for president of the United States,” Kennedy said in a media release. “Their leadership and members have demonstrated an inspiring commitment to values that revitalize our representative democracy.”
The Alliance Party in South Carolina is an off-shoot of an alternative political movement that dates to around 2013. That’s when Rex, the state’s former Democratic superintendent of education, and Oscar Lovelace, a Prosperity doctor who looked to challenge former Gov. Mark Sanford for the GOP nomination in 2006, teamed up to get an optional party off the ground. At the time they called the Democratic and Republican parties “broken and polarizing.”
Today the Alliance Party holds what they bill as a centrist view, pushing to end partisanship, corruption and stagnation, according to its messaging. It holds to various transparency requirements for its candidates, including supporting term limits of 12 years and a mandate that tax returns be posted on a campaign website.
In South Carolina, its support level is considered minimal; no Alliance Party representative has been elected to partisan office in the state.
Nationally, polls have indicated a Kennedy campaign could siphon off votes from both President Joe Biden and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who is still considered the overwhelming favorite in South Carolina where nine Electoral College delegates are at stake.
Last year when he first announced his intention to run as a Democrat for president, Kennedy made several stops in South Carolina to gauge support, even opening up offices here.
“I’m running against two presidents who both say that they’re running on a record of bringing enormous prosperity to our country,” Kennedy said in West Ashley in September. “I’ve spent a lot of time sitting at kitchen tables with people and hearing about their lives, and I hear nothing about prosperity. I see a level of desperation in this country that I’ve never seen before.”
Since going the independent route the Kennedy campaign has struggled to meet individual state requirements for ballot access. They report their ticket is officially on the ballot in eight states — Utah, Michigan, California, Delaware, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Texas, and South Carolina.
