(The author is a Latino consultant for American Values 2024)
New York: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate for the United States presidency backed by the American Values 2024 Super PAC, announced from the stage of a rally he led last week in Columbia, South Carolina, that his subsequent political activity will be in Salt Lake City, Utah, on November 30. RFK Jr. explained that his campaign is gathering signatures from all 50 states to ensure his name is included on the 2024 ballot.
Utah has 574,075 registered voters as unaffiliated, with a yearly increase. Over 100,000 declare themselves inactive because they have yet to participate in at least two consecutive general elections. Unaffiliated voters are more than double the number of Democratic voters and over half of the Republican voters, as reported by The Washington Examiner on Saturday, November 25.
“The state Democratic Party chose not to field its candidate against Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) in the 2022 elections but endorsed independent candidate Evan McMullin, who failed to defeat Lee. The mayor of Salt Lake County, where Kennedy is expected to visit, is Jenny Wilson, the party’s former candidate against Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) in 2018,” adds the press report.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared himself an independent presidential candidate on October 9 in Philadelphia, PA. Since then, his campaign has developed a plan to undertake an extensive tour of as many states as possible to use these venues for collecting signatures on the spot, thus avoiding the hiring of companies dedicated to this task that could cost millions of dollars.
His recent stop in Columbia, South Carolina, is particularly noteworthy because here, voters do not register with a party to vote but decide on which party’s ballot to participate in. Former President Donald Trump in South Carolina and Utah won the 2020 elections. However, the former state governor, Nikki Haley, is also running as a Republican presidential candidate, which could weaken the Republican vote and strengthen Bobby Kennedy’s position.
His visit to Salt Lake City in Utah is not a coincidence; politically speaking, this city is of vital importance, as it is here that the third and final presidential debate will take place in 2024. This comes after the state also hosted the 2020 vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.
The neighboring state, Arizona, which has already been visited by the independent presidential candidate RFK Jr., has another unique feature for his candidacy. Approximately 1,450,697 unaffiliated voters are registered in Arizona, representing 34% of all registered voters in the state. This is an increase of around 5,000 voters compared to those registered as Republicans. Arizona shifted its usual trend toward the Republican Party in 2020 and voted for the current President, Joe Biden, according to data obtained from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.
