A super PAC supporting the presidential ambitions of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised $6.47 million in July from a mix of major donors from both parties, according to a press release from American Values 2024 on Monday. About $5 million of that haul came during his testimony in front of the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
American Values 2024 boasts the support of former Donald Trump megadonor Tim Mellon, Democratic Party donor Abby Rockefeller, and Gavin de Becker, a security consultant and author close to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the press release.
“The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election,” Tim Mellon said in the press release.
The haul by the super PAC underscores the intense, albeit limited, support that Kennedy has received in his long-shot run against Joe Biden. The president still has majority support in polling, but Kennedy has notched 16 percent support in the most recent poll of the 2024 Democratic primary field conducted by Harvard-Harris, and he hit a polling high of 21 percent in an Emerson College survey this April. But other surveys have shown him trailing by more.
Donors see Kennedy’s advantage in his bipartisan appeal, a spokesperson for the PAC told POLITICO, citing the first-time candidate’s high favorability in the Harvard-Harris survey.
“This is the reason why he’s the logical best person to be the nominee: because he takes votes away from Trump,” said the spokesperson, who was granted anonymity to provide more context on the financial filings. “He isn’t viewed as a partisan hack. He’s viewed as a truth teller.”
The press release came the same day that American Values 2024 — which was founded by Tower Research Capital CEO Tony Lyons and Mark Gorton, president of Skyhorse Publishing — said the super PAC will file to the Federal Elections Commision that it raised about $9.8 million in the first six months of 2023.
“We Democrats sorely need a candidate people can be enthusiastic about," de Becker said in the release, "someone brave enough to tell the truth and someone who understands our regulatory agencies because he has litigated against their corruption for years.”
Lyons said in the release that the super PAC's best day of fundraising came the day of Kennedy’s appearance before the House subcommittee in which he was invited to testify on the topic of social media censorship on July 20. Numerous House Democrats called for the presidential candidate to be uninvited, pointing to comments he had made suggesting Jewish and Chinese people were less likely to be harmed by Covid-19.
Kennedy has denied charges that he was promoting an antisemitic trope, instead insisting that he was sharing research around genetically engineered bioweapons. He has accused Democrat who criticize him of censorship. The campaign also sent out several fundraising emails centered on his testimony. The campaign will next disclose its fundraising haul in October, and the super PAC will next have to report its finances at the end of the year.
“When the American people understand that the Biden administration has used the government to illegally censor RFK, Jr., target him with false accusations, illegally attack him in the White House press room, and deny him routine protection, they will voice their opposition to those un-American actions by donating more money to that candidate and the Super PAC supporting him,” Lyons said in the press release.
