A super PAC supporting Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy for president reports that a single donor who has given millions to Republicans in previous elections provided almost half of the funds it has raised so far this year.
American Values 2024 revealed in a mid-year filing to the Federal Election Commission that it raised about $9.8 million through the first half of the year. But $5 million of that came from Timothy Mellon, a GOP megadonor who gave millions during the last cycle to a super PAC that works to elect Republicans to the House and also donated thousands to several GOP House and Senate candidates.
American Values previously shared that it raised $6.47 million throughout July with donations from Democrats and Republicans, including Mellon. It also noted that it received a donation from Abby Rockefeller, who has long supported Democrats.
“The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election,” Mellon said in the release.
Other major donations that the super PAC received include $4.5 million from Gavin de Becker, a security consultant who has donated to Democratic and Republican campaigns over the years, including more recently Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s (Wis.) 2022 reelection campaign and Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential campaign. Yang was a Democrat at the time but has since left the party.
Despite the super PAC’s emphasis that Kennedy’s campaign receiving support from Democrats and Republicans demonstrates bipartisan appeal, the large donations from individuals who have supported Republicans in the past could further spur criticism of Kennedy from Democrats, who say his candidacy is simply a GOP-backed attempt to weaken President Biden.
Kennedy, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, has been a prominent anti-vaccine activist for years. The organization he founded about a decade ago, Children’s Health Defense, has been known to spread misinformation about vaccines.
He most recently received backlash over comments he made referencing a theory that the COVID-19 virus might have been “ethnically targeted” to attack Caucasians and Black people, with Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people the most immune.
Many in the Democratic Party, including Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, denounced the remarks.
Kennedy later said he was not arguing that the virus was targeted to spare Jewish people nor that “the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”
At Republicans’ invitation, he also appeared before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to discuss censorship and free speech despite Democratic calls for him to be disinvited.
Kennedy is a long shot to win the Democratic nomination against Biden, but he has often polled in double-digits in hypothetical match-ups with the incumbent.