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By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
August 29, 2024

Robby Lake is not ready to give up on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential aspirations.

Although Kennedy announced last Friday in Arizona that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, Lake believes Kennedy still has a path to the Oval Office. If neither major party candidate gets the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the November election, he said, Kennedy could determine the victor or might even become president himself.

Lake, a musician who lives near Bloomington, also said Kennedy has the ability to bring out the best in people. So, by remaining on the campaign trail and possibly joining a potential second Trump administration, Kennedy could have a calming effect and bring people together, Lake said.

“I believe if Mr. Kennedy continues speaking at these Trump rallies, he may be able to bring out the best in all these individuals,” Lake said. “I felt it when I saw him at the Trump rally in Arizona, I really did. I saw a change, and I felt the change in tone in the audience.”

Kennedy was running as an independent in the presidential race and had qualified to be on the ballot in several states in November, including Indiana. Early in the year, his poll numbers were in the double digits, reaching 12%, but they fell to 5% when President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press.

When he suspended his campaign, Kennedy said he would remove his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states so as not to be a spoiler. He did not identify the 10 states. Kennedy’s name will remain on the Indiana ballot and any votes cast for Kennedy will be tabulated for him, according to the Indiana Election Division.

Lake said that in November, he will “wholeheartedly cast my ballot for Robert F. Kennedy.” Even if the Kennedy campaign is still suspended, Lake does not see that his vote will be wasted, but rather, he said, he will be sending a message to the Trump and Harris camps that he has “no confidence in either of the two corporate parties.”

‘Maybe it’s just wishful thinking’

Initially, Kennedy entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat, before becoming an independent. In his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign, Kennedy assailed the Democratic Party, saying it has become the “party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Money.” Also, he noted the lawsuits the Democratic National Convention filed to challenge his attempts to get on the ballot and he claimed the Democrats were trying to subvert the will of the voters.

“In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it,” Kennedy said.

Lake echoed Kennedy’s disdain for the Democrats, saying he is disgusted by what he claims was the party’s work to undermine Kennedy’s presidential run.

Calling himself a “classic liberal,” Lake acknowledged his current feeling about the Democratic Party does not reflect his upbringing. A native of Holbrook, New York, Lake said his father revered the late President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Robert “Bobby” Kennedy. In fact, Lake was named after Bobby Kennedy and in his boyhood home his father hung a plaque inscribed with an excerpt from RFK’s 1968 speech in which he quoted George Bernard Shaw: “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream of things that never were and say, why not?”

Also, Lake became acquainted with radicalism during his childhood through his great uncle, Herbert Aptheker, an American Marxist historian and political activist who was blacklisted during the 1950s because of his membership in the Communist Party.

This election year, Lake and wife volunteered for Cornell West’s presidential campaign and are still electors for the independent candidate. They then shifted their support to Kennedy, Lake said, because he seemed “more well-rounded” and ran a sophisticated effort to get on the November ballot in all 50 states.

“In an effort to tackle the corporate corruption that’s in our government, Mr. Kennedy has brought many lawsuits against the big three-letter agencies and government,” Lake said, referring to federal offices like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with “big companies that continue to craft legislation in the backrooms of Congress.”

“That’s really what led me to feel a need to support his campaign,” Lake said.

Kennedy’s run for the White House also brought more attention to his conspiracy theories, including his false allegations about the dangers of vaccines, and odd claims, such as his assertion in a deposition that a worm ate part of his brain.

Even Kennedy’s own family separated themselves from his presidential run and called his endorsement of Trump a “betrayal” of their values.

Lake conceded that Kennedy evokes “a lot of different emotions” and has been subjected to “a lot of cherry picking” of his views, but he believes Kennedy has the skills the country needs, in particular to resolve the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Pointing to the rally in Arizona, Lake said he saw Kennedy bring out a “little more humility” and “maybe some humanity” in Trump.

“Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I really do feel that way,” Lake said. “I believe, just like he does, that there’s something good in everybody and we just need to connect with that and bring that out.”

Green Party blues in Indiana

The Green Party will not be on Indiana’s ballot, having failed to collect the required 36,000-plus eligible signatures.

In their post-convention news conference earlier this month, Jill Stein and Butch Ware, the Green Party’s nominees for president and vice president, respectively, railed against the Democratic Party and dismissed any claims they would be spoilers in the general election. Stein claimed the Democrats were revising false accusations made about her during her 2016 run for president and are using an “army of lawyers” to drain her campaign resources by filing lawsuits.

Also, Stein said, labeling her as someone who would divert votes from the Democratic presidential nominee and thus tilt the election toward Trump, was a ploy to “suppress democratic choice.” She cited statistics that indicate most people who cast a ballot for a Green Party candidate would not otherwise vote.

“We not only have a right to vote,” Stein said, “We have a right to decide who to vote for.”

Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He has been a content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and a planner for other papers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.

The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.