American Values 2024, a fundraising "Super PAC" supporting third party presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Tuesday it plans to spend up to $15 million (€13.89 million) getting him on the ballot in 10 states that will be important to winning the 2024 race.
Why it's important
While Mr Kennedy is believed to have cross-party appeal, has raised millions of dollars and is faring at levels not seen by a third party candidate since the early 1990s in opinion polls, none of it matters if he can't get on state ballots - a cumbersome process made deliberately difficult by the Republican and Democratic parties over the years.
What it involves
AV24, as the Super PAC calls itself, will spend money to collect signatures by hand, as state law requires, in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and Texas, which it says represent approximately half of the signatures nationwide that Mr Kennedy needs to get on the ballot in November.
AV24 was on track to raise nearly $30 million after Mr Kennedy, son of the Democratic senator who was assassinated in 1968, said in October he would run as an independent, AV24 co-founder Tony Lyons told Reuters. Millions have come from a former donor to Donald Trump, Timothy Mellon.
Notable quote
"We have chosen to pursue these critical states, some of them battlegrounds, due to the complexity of the state election codes and the volume of signatures necessary to achieve ballot access," said Deirdre Golffard, who advises the Super PAC.
Mr Kennedy is an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist.
Polls have suggested he could potentially take a significant number of votes, as much as one in seven, from Mr Biden and Mr Trump.
