As part of a national effort to shut out independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential ticket, challengers said he should be blocked from the ballot in Georgia for his use of a “sham” New York address for ballot access petitions.
Chief Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings heard the first round of challenges Monday to independent presidential candidate Kennedy and socialist candidate Claudia De la Cruz, and he will hear challenges concerning Cornel West and the Green Party’s Jill Stein on Thursday.
The hearing followed a New York judge’s ruling last week barring Kennedy from that state’s ballot over questions about his residency there, which Kennedy plans to appeal.
Adam Sparks, an attorney representing Georgia Democrats, argued the same, saying that Kennedy resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Cheryl Hines.
“Petitioners have shown that his New York residence was a sham used for political purposes,” Sparks said following a Monday hearing. “He doesn’t live there and he claimed to on each and every sheet of his petition here in Georgia. That’s improper. It invalidates the petition, full stop.”
The problem with Kennedy’s residence is that his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, also lives in California and there is a prohibition against having both the presidential and vice presidential nominees on a ticket residing in the same state.
Kennedy’s attorney, Larry Otter, pushed back, saying Kennedy has been a registered voter in New York for years.
“It’s amazing that, in the New York decision, the judge had the chutzpah to say, ‘I’m not going to respond to that constitutional argument,’ ” Otter said. “That was her job, and she failed.”
Sparks also argued Kennedy is unqualified to run as an independent candidate in Georgia due to his party status in several other states.
“The We the People Party has gained him access in at least six states and seems to be growing every day,” Sparks said. “The voters of Georgia have the right to understand whether a candidate is truly independent or if he is affiliated with all other sorts of labels.”
Otter said those parties do not exist in Georgia.
Malihi said he’ll hopefully have a decision for all four cases by the end of next week. Findings must be made before absentee ballots are mailed out to Georgians overseas and in the military by Sept. 17.
The Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic Party filed the challenges last month. The Georgia Republican Party plans to file intervening motions against them in a strategic move signaling the GOP’s belief that Kennedy and the other candidates are more likely to hurt Vice President Kamala Harris than former President Donald Trump. The challenges assert each candidate should be blocked from the Georgia ballot for various technical mistakes made in the petitioning process.
Three of the four challenged candidates filed the 7,500 petition signatures necessary to appear on the ballot, while Stein plans to take an alternate path to secure access by way of a new Georgia law that grants access to party candidates who appear on ballots in at least 20 other states.
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