The primary main operating mate announcement of the 2024 presidential election cycle got here a lot sooner than common this week, as White Home hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held an Oakland rally to make the large announcement, concluding weeks of hypothesis by introducing the younger political neophyte to the nation and revealing that he could have discovered the best addition to his long-shot ticket.
Nicole Shanahan — legal justice legal professional, Silicon Valley philanthropist, doable billionaire divorcée — is a local of Oakland who could have the best rags-to-riches backstory for a political newcomer. Shanahan has spoken about rising up with a household that relied on meals advantages and being raised by a schizophrenic father who had lifelong habit points. On Tuesday, she advised the group of her days as an legal professional, after finishing a legislation diploma a decade in the past at Santa Clara College College of Legislation, working with synthetic intelligence to push for legal justice reform and finish the school-to-prison pipeline for Black males.
Unmentioned at Tuesday’s occasion have been the main points of Shanahan’s rumor-plagued private life, which little doubt performed a task in her rise to nationwide consideration and changing into a vice presidential candidate. Her second marriage in 2018 was to one of many world’s richest males, Google co-founder Sergey Brin; the four-year union with the tech titan, throughout which the couple had a daughter, ended with studies of an affair between her and the world’s (generally) richest man, Elon Musk, a longtime pal of Brin — each Musk and Shanahan have denied that this alleged tryst ever occurred.
Shanahan made a case for herself to RFK Jr. loyalists by way of speaking factors close to and pricey to the candidate: the power illness epidemic; the “company seize of our regulatory businesses”; the nation’s kids, who she says are “not nicely” after “one shot on high of one other shot,” a lightweight reference to the MMR vaccine’s bogus hyperlink to autism, a false concept that was constructed on a lie and which her operating mate has repeated for years.
Little was stated that detailed Shanahan’s spectacular quantity of expertise, which incorporates seats on a number of boards of administrators, launching authorized tech firm ClearAccessIP and the personal basis Bia-Echo, and her rising listing of strategic philanthropic presents. Regardless of all of this earlier than the age of 40, she is primarily mentioned in regard to the rationale for and phrases of her divorce, with some speculating that the case settled together with her strolling away with $1 billion. Such deep pockets have led to criticism of Shanahan as a possible — now-confirmed — VP choose, notably after she bankrolled RFK’s Tremendous Bowl advert. The advert, which mirrored a John F. Kennedy marketing campaign spot from many years in the past, and which Shanahan stated that she labored on, was poo-pooed by different members of the Kennedy household.
Talking to supporters as he launched Shanahan, RKF outlined why the 38-year-old, who has by no means held public workplace, didn’t fairly make the case for his choose changing into the subsequent vice chairman. However he did inform the enthusiastic-if–modest-in-size crowd how Shanahan is nice for his marketing campaign — which is at the moment dealing with the arduous process of guaranteeing the unbiased’s title seems on November’s ballots in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
In actual fact, it’s exactly this robust process that led to Shanahan’s months-early addition to the ticket within the first place. For unbiased candidates, many U.S. states’ election guidelines require {that a} operating mate be listed as the mandatory poll signatures are collected. Forward of Tuesday’s occasion, the marketing campaign said that, so far, it has exceeded the entire poll entry benchmarks it had set for itself.
Shanahan’s addition to the ticket could be the second that redirects RFK’s marketing campaign; that is clearly the hope of each candidate and marketing campaign, as she is on the younger aspect of 40, that she is going to herald votes from the youth “who’ve misplaced religion of their future,” because the candidate stated Tuesday, for one half of a deliberate coalition the he says will even embody America’s working class. Boasting a checking account that might fill his marketing campaign’s coffers for months (recall {that a} VP choose could pump as a lot money right into a marketing campaign as they like), a seat on the Huge Tech desk that comes with skepticism concerning the trade’s integrity, and practices that enchantment to Biden-friendly youth and Trump-supporting working class.
And possibly most vital of all: Shanahan has the oh-so-important high quality of any VP: an unflinching loyalty to their boss. That was made clear throughout her rally speech, when she formally broke up with the Democrats, after donating for years to campaigns; she even claimed a “lifelong” affiliation with the get together in February whereas talking with Newsweek. After taking each main events to process, the VP candidate made the case on Tuesday for an Impartial motion in America.
“If you happen to ever thought-about an unbiased ticket … hearken to Bobby Kennedy in his personal phrases,” she stated. “Check out his imaginative and prescient for America. It’s a imaginative and prescient that I share too, as I spend the subsequent seven months of my life getting him on each poll on this nation.”