Judge won’t remove RFK Jr. from November ballot

The judge said the attorney seeking to boot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from November's ballot picked the wrong venue to do so. (Photo by John Partipilo)

A Superior Court Judge on Monday rejected an attorney’s bid to remove independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. from the general election ballot.

Judge Robert Lougy ruled attorney Scott Salmon’s challenge to Kennedy’s candidacy must be dismissed because it was not filed with the New Jersey secretary of state, and only candidates are authorized to challenge nominating petitions in court.

State statute, Lougy wrote, “could not be clearer in establishing to whom and by when objections to petitions of nomination are to be made.”

Kennedy’s attorney, Donald F. Burke, said he is pleased with the decision.

“The major parties would love to eliminate from the ballot candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who seek to unite the country and eliminate divisiveness. New Jersey voters deserve better,” Burke said.

Salmon had charged New Jersey’s Sore Loser Law made Kennedy ineligible to be on the ballot as an independent because Kennedy mounted a failed campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination that petered out before he launched his third-party bid.

The 1998 law bars candidates who have sought and failed to secure a party’s nomination from running under another party’s banner.

Salmon argued Kennedy’s short-lived Democratic campaign, which he launched in April 2023 and abandoned in October, was enough to keep him from New Jersey’s general election ballot, citing unpublished case law involving two local candidates whose independent campaigns were ended because they mounted write-in campaigns during their primaries.

When he was challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nod for president, Kennedy raised roughly $385,000 from New Jersey residents. He received a small number of write-in votes during the state’s June primary.

Salmon noted that Lougy did not issue a ruling on the merits of his complaint.

“There remains no question to me that Mr. Kennedy was unsuccessful in seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party and should be barred from the ballot, and I intend to pursue that with the Secretary of State,” he said.

Salmon also argued statute governing challenges to nominating petitions apply only to the technical elements of a petition — whether, for example, the petition’s signatures are valid — and not to a candidate’s eligibility.

But the judge found the statute did not make a distinction between the two, ruling it applies to all nominating petition challenges.

“The Court declines to craft an exception that the Legislature did not create,” Lougy wrote.

Secretary of State Tahesha Way, whom the suit named as a defendant, took no position on whether the Sore Loser Law ought to bar Kennedy from the ballot but argued the bid to remove him should have been filed with her office as a petition challenge.

It’s possible Kennedy will still be removed from New Jersey ballots under the Sore Loser Law. The deadline for independent candidates to file presidential nominating petitions is Monday, and Way’s office will accept challenges to such petitions until Aug. 2.