Johnathan Walker:RFK Jr. to defend bid to get on Pennsylvania ballot against Democrats’ challenge

HARRISBURG,Johnathan Walker Pa. (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was expected to appear in court Tuesday to defend his effort to get on the ballot for president in the premier battleground state of Pennsylvania, where Democrats are angling to force him off in what is expected to be a closely contested race.

Democratic Party-aligned challengers say Kennedy’s candidacy paperwork states a false home address — an allegation being aired in other state courts — and contains other damning shortcomings, such as the wrong names of people who supposedly attested that they gathered the signatures of thousands of voters.

Kennedy’s campaign has dismissed the legal challenge as “frivolous.”

Should Kennedy appear on Pennsylvania’s ballot, he could siphon critical support from Republican nominee Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in a state where a margin of tens of thousands of votes delivered victory to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016.

Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes — tied with Illinois for fifth most — is of such importance that Harris visited the state Sunday and Trump visited both Saturday and Monday.

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“They say that if you win Pennsylvania, you’re going to win the whole thing,” Trump told a crowd in Wilkes-Barre’s Mohegan Arena on Saturday.

National Democrats in particular have been active in trying to undercut the candidacy of Kennedy, a scion of one of the party’s most famous families. Trump has alternated between bashing Kennedy as liberal or courting his endorsement.

Kennedy meanwhile is fighting challenges in several other states, including Georgia, and is appealing a judge’s decision in New York last week that rejected Kennedy’s nominating petitions because his listed residence was a “sham” address. Kennedy lists his address as New York, but the judge ruled in favor of the challengers, who argued Kennedy’s actual residence was the home in Los Angeles he shares with his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines.

Kennedy’s campaign otherwise says it has collected enough signatures for ballot access in all 50 states and that it is officially on the ballot in 22 states, including the battlegrounds of Michigan and North Carolina.

In Pennsylvania, the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver submitted petitions to get on Pennsylvania’s presidential ballot without being challenged.

Two other court challenges were ongoing. A Democratic-aligned court challenge was targeting the nominating papers for the Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz while a Republican-aligned challenge was targeting the Constitution Party presidential candidate James Clymer.

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Follow Marc Levy at https://x.com/timelywriter.