On the heels of more than a dozen Kennedy family members’ endorsement, the Biden campaign released a new ad Friday featuring a handful of the most prominent descendants of Camelot sharing their endorsement of President Joe Biden over their own relative, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The ad opens with a succession of Kennedys introducing themselves, including Joe Kennedy III, a former Congressman and nephew of RFK Jr.; RFK Jr.’s sisters Kerry Kennedy, Rory Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend; and RFK Jr.’s brother Chris Kennedy,
Joe Kennedy, essentially speaking for the group, says he's here to "proudly" endorse Biden.
"Our future is on the ballot in a way in which we haven't seen in generations," he says.
"The only way to win this election is for everybody to go out and vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Kerry Kennedy adds.
Chris Kennedy closes out the ad by comparing Biden to his late father.
"When I think of modern politicians in our country in this century, I think Joe Biden is the RFK of his generation," he says.
In essence: “The stakes are high. Vote for Biden. He's carrying the torch of our father's legacy.”
The ad release was clearly timed to coincide with the Kennedy clan endorsement as the Biden campaign sets its sights on neutralizing the threat of RFK Jr.'s candidacy.
But RFK Jr.'s extended family aren’t the only ones trying to blunt his impact on the race. On Friday, The New York Times reported that nearly 50 of RFK Jr.’s former colleagues from the Natural Resources Defense Council are urging him to exit the race.
The group is running a newspaper ad in the swing states of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, emphasizing that Kennedy's candidacy could win the race for Trump.
“A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote to destroy that progress and put Trump back in the White House,” says the newspaper ad, signed by the co-founder and presidents past and present of the council, where Kennedy worked as a senior attorney for nearly 30 years. “Honor our planet, drop out.”
Increased concern over RFK Jr.'s candidacy comes as he is polling higher than several other third-party candidates. For instance, in a Marquette Law School poll of Wisconsin released this week, RFK Jr. won 13% of registered voters while Trump edged out Biden by a single point, 41% to 40%. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Harvard professor Cornel West combined for 5% of the vote. In the poll's head-to-head matchup, Trump topped Biden by 2 points, 51% to 49%.
While every third-party candidate stands to benefit Trump, who has never won more than 47% of the vote nationwide, RFK Jr. appears to pose the greatest singular hurdle to Biden's reelection as he siphons away some Democratic voters who won’t vote for Trump but feel unenthusiastic about their choices.
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