Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was barred from running for president in New York on Monday when a judge invalidated his candidate petition for wrongly claiming he lives in New York.
The decision followed a four-day trial last week about whether Kennedy truly lived at the Westchester County address on his petition and if lying about it should disqualify him. Kennedy, who moved to California in 2014 after living in Westchester for three decades, had listed his friends’ house in Katonah and insisted that was his true home during the case.
In a 34-page ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Christina Ryba found that Kennedy’s presence at his friends’ home was “virtually nonexistent” and that he used their address solely “for the purpose of maintaining his voter registration and furthering his own political aspirations in this State.” She called his residency claim “a sham” and ruled the petition void for that reason, barring him from the Nov. 5 election ballot.
“Using a friend’s address for political and voting purposes, while barely stepping foot on the premises, does not equate to residency under the Election Law,” Ryba wrote. “To hold otherwise would establish a dangerous precedent and open the door to the fraud and political mischief that the Election Law residency rules were designed to prevent.”
Kennedy’s petition had been challenged by Clear Choice PAC, a Democratic group that has sought to keep Kennedy off the ballot in multiple states to prevent him from acting as election spoiler. In a statement Monday night, the group celebrated its court victory and predicted it would prevail again if Kennedy appeals — as he said he would do if he lost when speaking to reporters last week.
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“The Kennedy team will undoubtedly file desperate lawsuit after desperate lawsuit in the coming days and weeks,” the Clear Choice statement read. “They will fail, and it will not change the simple truth: he lied, and he’s being held accountable.”
Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling means Kennedy can’t compete with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump for New York’s 28 electoral votes on Nov. 5.
The state Board of Elections must certify its general election ballot by Sept. 11.
Kennedy, who’s running as an independent, was the only rival left for the Democratic and Republican nominees in New York after three minor-party candidates failed to get enough petition signatures to qualify for the ballot.
As of Friday, Kennedy’s campaign said it had collected enough signatures to run in 45 states and was gathering them in the other five.
Residency disputeDoes RFK Jr. truly live in Westchester? Ruling will decide if he runs for president in NY
Kennedy gave the same Westchester address as his home on his petitions in 17 other states. Whether any of those states disqualify him based on that residency claim remains to be seen. Clear Choice had raised similar objections in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Maine to his listing a New York address.
Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist and former environmental lawyer, appeared to be a formidable player in the presidential race earlier this year, polling in the double digits on the strength of his famous name and a loyal base of supporters. His candidacy gave both major parties jitters by threatening to siphon support from either nominee.
But his polling nationally has dropped to around 5%. In New York, where he is also known for his crusades against water pollution with the environmental group Riverkeeper, he dropped from 13% in a Siena College poll in February to 7% in a Siena poll released this month.
His standing may dip a little more after his bizarre account of dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park as a prank 10 years ago. He made that admission in a video he posted on X on Aug. 4 to preempt a New Yorker article published the next day that revealed his role in the 2014 bear mystery.
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In the New York petition challenge, attorneys for Clear Choice argued that Kennedy’s real home clearly is the 5,900-square-foot he and his wife — actress Cheryl Hines — bought for $6.6 million in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. They suggested he contrived another address to bypass a constitutional clause that could have cost him California’s 54 electoral votes, were he to win the state.
Kennedy and his lawyers insisted he considers New York his home and plans to settle there permanently with his wife when she retires. Barbara Moss, the owner of the house on Croton Lake Road in Katonah that Kennedy claimed as his address, verified that she agreed last year to let him use a spare bedroom and that he paid her rent.
She and Kennedy both testified in court last week that he had only slept there once.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at [email protected].