North Carolina’s state board of elections will make a final decision about whether Kennedy will make it on to November’s ballot in this swing state on July 9, after preliminarily denying him (and fellow independent Cornel West) access last week. Simultaneously, his campaign must also prepare for hearings in New York, where the validity of Kennedy’s signatures are being challenged, as well as the home address he listed on his petition paperwork — the independent claimed his home is in New York, not in California where he has said he lives in past interviews with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines — which could endanger his petitions in several more states. A lawsuit in New Jersey tries to hold the fact that Kennedy initially entered the 2024 race as a Democrat against him to keep him off the ballot under the state’s “sore loser” law. And another lawsuit filed by Nevada’s Democratic Party looms on the horizon. (POLITICO is tracking ballot access for Kennedy and other third-party candidates.) The Kennedy campaign has protested these challenges, alleging in a recent memo that there’s a “lawfare campaign against his ballot access.” But fighting these challenges and lawsuits will require significant manpower and legal fees, not memos. The cost of defending the investment in signature gathering efforts, on which the campaign has spent millions already, will be significant. And these obstacles are hurtling toward the campaign at a time when its fundraising has dipped across the board, and public polling is trending downward. An ecosystem of Democratic Party-aligned groups, nonprofits and PACs are campaigning against Kennedy. The super PAC Clear Choice Action has taken the lead in digging into the tangled weeds of ballot access. “We are not interested in launching challenges for the sake of it. Our reputation is at stake in every state,” Pete Kavanaugh, president of Clear Choice, said in an interview with POLITICO. Kavanaugh said he has a team of a couple of dozen people who can parachute into the paperwork filed by Kennedy — and the other third party campaigns — to be an added watchdog on the process. Clear Choice filed the challenges in New York and North Carolina and more could come later in the summer, when most states have deadlines for signatures to be turned in. Laws vary in every state, which means navigating 51 different sets of procedures and requirements to gain national ballot access. Some states are much easier than others, just requiring a few thousand signatures from eligible voters. But bigger states — like New York, Texas, Illinois and California — mandate tens of thousands of signatures, and some of them must be gathered in relatively short time frames. “When you rush signature programs at this scale, the quality goes down the tubes,” Kavanuagh said. “They’re trying to overwhelm with sheer quantity [of signatures] because they know quality is extremely low. Our expectation has been that in these high threshold states like New York, Texas and Illinois that they were going to have significant issues with validity and fraud, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen to date—and they’ve said so publicly.” Happy Monday, and welcome to July. Thanks to Brittany for today’s top. Reach me at mfernandez@politico.com and @madfernandez616. Days until the Republican National Convention: 14 Days until the Arizona primaries: 29 Days until the Tennessee primaries: 31 Days until the Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington state primaries: 36 Days until the Hawaii primaries: 40 Days until the Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin primaries: 43 Days until the Democratic National Convention: 49 Days until the Alaska, Florida and Wyoming primaries: 50 Days until the 2024 election: 127
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