(ABC News) One Saturday last month, several dozen members of the Alaskan Independence Party, a small, largely unknown political group whose primary goal is to put Alaskan secession from the United States to a vote, gathered in Fairbanks for their biennial convention.
Among the topics of conversation: whether to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president.
The party ultimately rejected Kennedy, who is running as an independent, after a few outspoken members said they did not want him atop their 2024 ticket, according to John Howe, the party’s chairman, who was involved in the discussions.
“There was serious consideration,” Howe, a machine shop owner, told ABC News.
The decision to pass on Kennedy was seen as a blow to the candidate — “They wanted us to put him on the ballot,” Howe said — as Kennedy works to overcome the biggest obstacle to his plans to run as a major outside candidate in November: getting on the ballot across the country.
Typically, independent candidates must undergo the painstaking, expensive process of gathering thousands of signatures from registered voters in each state in order to qualify for ballot access.
But a candidate can bypass those requirements if a political party that already has ballot access in a given state nominates them to lead their ticket there.
Kennedy has successfully employed that strategy in Michigan and California, where he will technically appear on the ballot as the nominee for the Natural Law Party of Michigan and the American Independent Party of California.
What’s more, his campaign has been in contact with minor parties in at least six other states, too, ABC News has learned through conversations with leaders in more than a dozen minor parties across the country. (The Kennedy campaign did not return requests for comment for this story or respond to the details that the party leaders provided.)
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
“As the campaign sees and recognizes that these are very convenient vessels out there, it’s a clever move, and it’s not a surprise they do it,” Derek Muller, a University of Notre Dame professor specializing in election law, told ABC News.
Early polling of the 2024 race suggests Kennedy could take a notable amount of support in a close race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the two leading candidates — if Kennedy makes it on the ballot. A new ABC News/Ipsos survey of adults found Kennedy with 12% in a hypothetical five-way election with Trump, Biden and two other candidates, Cornel West and Jill Stein.
Kennedy’s campaign claims to have made it on the ballot in 10 states so far, including the battlegrounds of Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina. Elections offices in three states have confirmed to ABC News that Kennedy is on the ballot. In other states, officials have said they can’t yet confirm his candidacy.
Kennedy’s strategy of linking with minor parties has encountered both challenges and success. In some cases, like Alaska, the parties have rejected him while in others, they are actively speaking with his campaign about nominating him.
His campaign tried and failed to earn the nomination of the Unity Party of Colorado, which chose instead to back West, another independent candidate, Tijani Cole, the party’s chairman, told ABC News in an email.
The Alliance Party, a national group with ballot access in South Carolina, has been more receptive.
“National Alliance Party leadership has begun early conversations with the campaign for potential mutual support,” Phil Feuhrer, the party’s national co-vice chair, told ABC News in an email.
Besides nominating Kennedy to lead the party’s ticket in South Carolina, Feuhrer said the party is discussing helping the Kennedy campaign gather signatures across Minnesota to appear as an independent candidate there.
“If we reach full agreement with the campaign and our internal statewide leadership teams, it would include placement onto the South Carolina ballot as well as the Minnesota Independence-Alliance taking lead on placing the campaign onto the Minnesota ballot,” Feuhrer added, using the official name of Minnesota’s branch of the party.
“Those conversations are young and still ongoing,” he said.
Kennedy’s camp is also in talks with the Reform Party, which has ballot access in Florida and Mississippi, according to party leaders.
Jenniffer Desatoff, the party’s Florida chair, told ABC News they are “continuing communication with the Kennedy campaign at this time.” (Kennedy’s campaign also contacted the Ecology Party of Florida but was informed the party does not have a ballot line in the presidential race, the party’s chair, Cara Campbell, told ABC News.)
Elsewhere, the Kennedy campaign twice reached out to representatives of the Constitution Party, which has ballot access in nearly a dozen states, but the party and the campaign were never able to connect, Donna Ivanovich, a spokeswoman for the party, told ABC News.
