Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will indeed remain on New Jersey ballots this November, with Secretary of State Tahesha Way accepting an administrative law judge’s opinion yesterday that Kennedy’s campaign has not run afoul of New Jersey’s Sore Loser Law.
Way also upheld separate administrative law decisions keeping two other independent presidential candidates, Peter Sonski and Shiva Ayyadurai, off the ballot for different reasons.
Kennedy, the top-polling independent candidate for president this year, had faced a challenge from election attorney Scott Salmon because he had begun his campaign as a Democrat before switching to run as an independent in October 2023. New Jersey law prohibits candidates who are unsuccessful in a primary election from then running as an independent, and Salmon said Kennedy’s abortive Democratic primary campaign should prevent him from reaching the general election ballot.
Administrative Law Judge Ernest Bongiovanni, though, called Salmon’s interpretation of the law “overbroad” and kept Kennedy on the ballot. In her decision today, Way largely agreed with Bongiovanni, saying that the Sore Loser Law is meant to apply to candidates who actively file to run or seek write-in votes in a primary, neither of which Kennedy did.
“Kennedy Jr. abandoned any efforts to obtain the Democratic nomination five months before the Democratic primary filing deadline of March 25, 2024 and seven months before the June 4, 2024 Democratic primary in New Jersey,” Way wrote. “Moreover, there is no record evidence that Kennedy Jr. expended significant resources to appear on the ballot in the Democratic primary in New Jersey – as opposed to nationwide efforts – prior to his abandoning efforts to seek Democratic nomination.”
Way did, however, shoot down a separate part of Bongiovanni’s opinion, in which the judge claimed Salmon needed to file his challenge before June 4; Salmon’s July 31 filing, Way said, was timely and acceptable.
The challenge to Sonski’s petitions was much more straightforward. The Bergen County Young Republicans argued that Sonski, the nominee of the American Solidarity Party, had not received the requisite 800 signatures to appear on the ballot – and after a marathon court hearing, Administrative Law Judge Judith Lieberman found that they were correct, rejecting 199 of Sonski’s signatures and pushing him below the threshold.
Ayyadurai, meanwhile, faced a challenge from the New Jersey Democratic State Committee over the fact that he was born in India and is a naturalized citizen, which does not meet the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.” Ayyadurai appeared at Monday’s hearing himself to make the case for why he should stay on the ballot, but Administrative Law Judge William Cooper rejected his arguments, saying that the Constitution’s requirements are clear-cut and have been upheld in the past.
Way affirmed both of those decisions today, thus thinning the presidential field in New Jersey by two and leaving seven independent candidates remaining: Kennedy and the nominees of the Green, Libertarian, Socialist Workers, Socialist Equality, Socialism and Liberation, and U.S. Constitution Parties.
This story was updated at 5:17 p.m. with Way’s decision on Ayyadurai’s candidacy.