Minnesota voters who have heard the news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his campaign for president late last month to endorse Donald Trump may be surprised to see the independent Democrat’s name will still be on their ballots this fall.
That’s according to representatives with the Minnesota secretary of state, who told Alpha News on Thursday that it hasn’t received any communication from the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign or its surrogates in Minnesota requesting the ticket be removed from ballots in Minnesota.
“There is no mechanism provided in law for withdrawal once those submitted signatures have been approved,” Peter Bartz-Gallagher, communications director for Secretary of State Steve Simon, told Alpha News. “So the candidates you refer to will appear on the ballot, unless our office is told otherwise by a court.”
While RFK Jr. suspended his presidential campaign just 11 days ago to announce his support for Trump, the ballot-related consequences from his decision are more complicated.
In a speech Kennedy gave Aug. 23 at a Trump rally in Arizona, he said he and the 45th president met in Minneapolis in May and then in Florida a few weeks later, and “we talked not about the things that separate us, because we don’t agree on everything, but on the values and issues that bind us together.”
That same day Kennedy told reporters that he would ask his supporters to continue to back him in a majority of states, with the exception of 10 swing states where he would attempt to withdraw his name from the ballots in an effort to prevent his presence from being a spoiler. According to CBS, Minnesota is not on the list of 10 states where Kennedy is seeking to have his name removed.
Kennedy instructs supporters to vote for Trump in swing states
“I want everyone to know that I am not terminating my campaign,” Kennedy said. “I am simply suspending it, and not ending it. My name will remain on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state you can vote for me without helping or harming President Trump or Vice President Harris.
“In red states the same will apply,” Kennedy continued. “But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I am gonna remove my name. And I’ve already started that process and urge voters not to vote for me.”
In the days following that announcement, RFK Jr. supporters across the country have taken to social media to lay out what that means for their vote in each state this November.
One of those is Mark Frascone, who helped lead a drive for the Kennedy-Shanahan campaign in Minnesota to collect the required 2,500 signatures as part of an application he submitted to the Minnesota secretary of state requesting access to the presidential ballot in Minnesota.
“There was real excitement when the opportunity came to help organize for [Kennedy-Shanahan] here in Minnesota,” said Frascone, who recalls fondly his vote for Jesse Ventura in 1998. “The two major parties have had such a stranglehold on politics here, RFK offered an opportunity to shake things up.”
On June 21, the secretary of state sent a letter to Frascone as a Kennedy-Shanahan surrogate to inform the campaign it had been approved for the Minnesota ballot. At the time, RFK Jr., listed as a “We the People” Party candidate, was the first presidential candidate approved for the ballot. Since then, Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have been approved to appear as Republican Party presidential candidates. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were approved on Aug. 23 to appear as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidates. Other presidential candidates approved to appear on the Minnesota ballot include: Jill Stein of the Green Party, Cornel West of the Justice for All Party, Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party and Rachele Fruit of the Socialist Workers Party. In total, Minnesota voters will have nine different presidential tickets to choose from on their ballots.
While Kennedy has promised to make every legal effort he can to remove his name from the ballot in 10 swing states, Fox News reported last week that Kennedy will be unable to remove his name from two of those key states — Michigan and Wisconsin, where in polls conducted last month Kennedy was registering more than 5 percent of support from likely voters.
Latest Minnesota poll has 9 percent of voters either undecided or voting for ‘other
A KSTP-TV poll conducted last week indicated that 4 percent of likely Minnesota voters plan to vote for a candidate “other” than Trump or Harris. Five percent of those surveyed said they are still undecided. Frascone said he considers himself in that camp at the moment. He told Alpha News on Friday that he continues to believe strongly in RFK Jr.’s campaign message and energy, but that he will wait and see what the independent candidate who has now aligned with Trump may instruct his supporters to do in Minnesota.
“Pragmatically speaking, if Mr. Kennedy’s people came to us and said, ‘We need you to vote for Trump (in Minnesota),’ as an organizer and supporter I would follow Kennedy’s lead on that,” Frascone said. “That’s where I am right now.”
Frascone said some Kennedy supporters are also evaluating the prospect that a vote for RFK Jr. in Minnesota could potentially lead to another third-party candidate attaining major party status in Minnesota, for future election cycles. Although, a recent DFL-sponsored bill that Gov. Tim Walz signed into law has made it more difficult for third-party candidates to achieve major party status.
When DFL legislators first proposed the bill in March of 2023, they proposed to increase the threshold of votes needed to achieve major party status from 5 percent to 10 percent. But a final version of the bill was amended so that the threshold was increased to 8 percent.
Republicans in the House and Senate voted against a state government spending and policy bill that included that provision.
Frascone said that earlier this summer there were many who believed RFK Jr. could potentially reach that vote share threshold of 8 percent.
“But now I think a lot of people may be saying, ‘can he get to 1 percent?’”
Hank Long
Hank Long is a journalism and communications professional whose writing career includes coverage of the Minnesota legislature, city and county governments and the commercial real estate industry. Hank received his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where he studied journalism, and his law degree at the University of St. Thomas. The Minnesota native lives in the Twin Cities with his wife and four children. His dream is to be around when the Vikings win the Super Bowl.
