WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 20: Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. listens before the start of a hearing with the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Capitol Hill on July 20, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the committee held the hearing to discuss instances of the U.S. government's alleged censoring of citizens, political figures and journalists. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attracted the attention of many Republican donors who have historically backed GOP candidates like Donald Trump. Kennedy’s political stances seem to be enticing both conservative and liberal voters.
California Republican Mark Dickinson, who made a fortune in the aerospace industry, has donated $450,000 to federal candidates since 2015, with $400,000 allotted to Trump Victory, a committee that allows individuals to give large sums of money to the former president.
Keith Sheldon, a retired car dealership executive from Texas, donated $5,400 to Trump’s campaign in 2016, the individual maximum that year. He donated the new maximum of $5,600 to Trump in 2020 and has given several thousand dollars to GOP candidates for the House of Representatives.
Now, according to Federal Election Commission records, neither Dickinson nor Sheldon is backing a conservative candidate; instead, they both gave the current maximum of $6,600 to Kennedy. This marks the first time either donor has funded a Democrat.
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Dickinson and Sheldon are not alone — the majority of Kennedy’s biggest donors have previously only backed Republicans. Kennedy has targeted conservative voters and donors by frequently appearing on Fox News, where he is one of the only Democrats to receive positive coverage.
Kennedy is also going out of his way to help Republican lawmakers in order to spotlight his bipartisan perspectives. On July 20, he testified about efforts to “censor” him.
The environmental lawyer has historically been photographed with high-profile Republican figures and is known for his conservative takes on vaccine safety and the war in Ukraine. Even Trump himself has praised Kennedy for being “very smart.”
Though he seems to be popular among voters, Democrats have attributed his success to name recognition, and have rejected the possibility of Kennedy beating Biden for the Democratic nomination.
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