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(NEWSMAX) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign is claiming the Democratic National Committee is trying to quash its efforts to challenge President Joe Biden and allow him to easily win the 2024 nomination.
“Unfortunately, it appears that the DNC has created a class of pledged delegates, called Party Leaders and Elected Officials (PLEOs), who are essentially the same as super delegates, due to the amount of control the party exercises over elected officials,” former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Kennedy’s campaign manager, said Friday in a news release.
“This puts the DNC, once again, in the position of overturning the will of voters across the United States. It is unclear how overturning the nation’s majority vote could be interpreted as trusting the people.”
The campaign said the DNC’s proposed reordering of state primaries to penalize states that did not vote for Biden in 2020 “would discount the votes of millions of Americans and limit the ballot access of millions more to mail-in voting only.”
The DNC’s actions mirror what it did in 2016, when it appeared to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders for the presidential nomination.
“There’s some really wild things that they’re now considering, including forcing me to actually pay for primaries,” Kennedy said Friday on Fox News. “And their logic is that they don’t need a primary because they already have a candidate.”
The DNC, at Biden’s insistence, moved South Carolina to the top of the 2024 primary schedule on Feb. 3 and its rules say if states do not abide by the new schedule, they could be penalized half their delegates at the national convention. Biden also said he might not appear at primaries that occur before South Carolina.
Iowa’s caucuses, which traditionally kick off the presidential election season, would be moved down the line, New Hampshire and Nevada would be second on Feb. 6, and Georgia next on Feb. 13. But New Hampshire state law says it must be the first presidential primary and Georgia state law says it must hold the Republican and Democratic primaries on the same day. Georgia’s GOP presidential primary is set for March 12.
The campaign said Kucinich sent two letters last week to DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, requesting a meeting between Kennedy and Harrison to discuss voter rights and protection of the people’s voice.
“Mr. Kennedy wants to make sure that every Democrat who votes in a primary, their votes will count, and that if you win a primary, that you win the delegates,” Kucinich said Friday on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Prime Time.” “I know that sounds like a novel idea, but as Mr. Kennedy has pointed out, the DNC has arranged it so they can put extra delegates and stuff the ballot box in a primary and effectively, even if Mr. Kennedy were to get 60-70%, hand the election to Mr. Biden.
“You can call this a ‘heads we win, tails you lose’ approach, and I don’t think the American people will buy that.”
Beyond those issues, the campaign has also voiced concern about the DNC’s refusal to host debates between the Democrat candidates – author Marianne Williamson and Kennedy are Democrats who have declared bids to challenge Biden.
