Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Nicole Shanahan react on stage as she becomes the vice presidential candidate of Kennedy, in Oakland, California.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Robert F.Kennedy Jr. has picked Nicole Shanahan, a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office, to be his running mate in his independent bid for president, he announced on Tuesday.

An unconventional choice, Shanahan, who is 38, brings youth and considerable wealth to Kennedy’s long-shot campaign but is little known outside Silicon Valley.

Shanahan leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organisation she founded to direct money toward issues, including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes. She also is a Stanford University fellow and was the founder and chief executive of ClearAccessIP, a patent management firm that was sold in 2020.

Shanahan was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin from 2018 to 2023, and they have a young daughter. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Kennedy made his announcement.

Before the announcement, Kennedy’s campaign manager and daughter-in-law, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, praised Shanahan’s work on behalf of “honest governance, racial equity, regenerative agriculture and children’s and maternal health”. She said the work “reflects many of our country’s most urgent needs”.

Kennedy, who said in an interview Monday with “The State of California” on KCBS radio that his VP search placed a priority on “somebody who could represent young people”, said Tuesday that Shanahan — who he said, like him, has “left the Democratic Party” — also shares his concerns about government overreach and his distrust in major political parties’ abilities to make lasting change.

“She’ll tell you that she now understands at the defence agencies work for the military industrial complex, that health agencies work for big pharma and the USDA works for big ag and the processed food cartels,” Kennedy said at his Oakland rally. “The EPA is in cahoots with the polluters, that the scientists can be mercenaries, that government officials sometimes act as sensors, and that the Fed works for Wall Street and allows millionaire bankers to prey upon on Main Street and the American worker.” Kennedy had previously signalled interest in picking a celebrity or a household name such as NFL quarterback Aaron Rogers, “Dirty Jobs” star Mike Rowe or former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who was a wrestler and actor.

According to campaign finance records, Shanahan has long donated to Democratic candidates, including giving the maximum amount allowed to Kennedy when he was still pursuing that party’s nomination before switching to an independent bid in October.

It was unclear if Shanahan would use her own money on the campaign, but she has already opened her wallet to back Kennedy.

She was a driving force and the primary donor behind a Super Bowl ad produced by a pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024, for which she contributed USD 4 million. In response to criticism following the ad’s release, the super PAC said its “idea, funding, and execution came primarily” from Shanahan.

The super PAC can accept unlimited funds but is legally barred from coordinating with Kennedy’s team.

But as a candidate for vice-president, Shanahan can give unlimited sums to the campaign directly. That’s potentially a huge boost for Kennedy’s expensive push to get on the ballot in all 50 states, an endeavour he has said will cost USD 15 million and require collecting more than a million signatures.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. chose Nicole Shanahan on Tuesday to be his vice-presidential pick as he mounts an independent White House bid that has spooked national Democrats.

Shanahan (38) is a California lawyer and philanthropist who’s never held elected office. Shanahan leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organisation she founded to direct money toward issues, including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes.

Kennedy, a former Democrat, made the announcement in Oakland, California.

“Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party,” he said. “Our values didn’t change. The Democratic Party did.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s event, Kennedy and his aides circulated the names of several contenders, including celebrities with no experience in politics.

Two hours before Kennedy’s rally was scheduled to begin at a performing arts venue, a handful of supporters were lined up outside. Broken-down cars, discarded bicycles, tents and all manner of household goods took up the sidewalk and a park directly outside, a visual reminder of the housing crisis that has plagued California.

Dozens of men in black suits made up a heavy security presence for a candidate who has loudly complained that he has not been granted protection from the US Secret Service. Kennedy’s campaign has spent millions of dollars with the security company owned by Gavin de Becker, who has been a major donor to his campaign and associated super PAC.

Sarah Morris, a Kennedy supporter from Olympia, Washington, who flew to Oakland for the rally, said Kennedy should pick somebody who would “complement him well and balance him out”.

“It would be nice to see a VP who leans a little more right than he does,” said the 47-year-old real estate agent. “I just hope he picks a good partner. I hope he doesn’t pick somebody that’s polarizing.” A list of speakers includes Angela Stanton-King, a woman pardoned by then-President Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring that led to a 2004 federal conspiracy conviction and two years in prison; Metta World Peace, the NBA all-star player formerly known as Ron Artest; and Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford Medical School professor who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and was part of Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential launch event last year.

Kennedy’s campaign has spooked Democrats, who are fighting third-party options that could draw support from President Joe Biden and help Trump. As they head into a 2020 rematch, Biden and Trump are broadly unpopular with the US public and will compete for the votes of people who aren’t enthusiastic about either of them.

Without the backing of a party, Kennedy faces an arduous task to get on the ballot, with varying rules across the 50 states. He’s picking a running mate now because about half of the states require him to designate one before he can apply for ballot access.

The requirement is already bedeviling Kennedy’s ballot access effort in Nevada, where Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a March 7 letter to independent candidates that they must nominate a vice-presidential candidate before collecting signatures. The letter came days after Kennedy’s campaign announced he’d collected enough signatures in the state. If Aguilar’s opinion survives a likely legal challenge, Kennedy will have to start again in collecting just over 10,000 signatures in the state.

“This is the epitome of corruption,” said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign lawyer, in a statement Monday, accusing Aguilar of doing the bidding of the Democratic National Committee.

Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.

Kennedy is a descendant of a storied Democratic family that includes his father, Robert F Kennedy, who was a US senator, attorney general and presidential candidate, and his uncle former President John F Kennedy.

He began his campaign as a primary challenge to Biden but last fall said he’d run as an independent instead.

RFK Jr is leveraging a network of loyal supporters he’s built over years, many of them drawn to his anti-vaccine activism and his message that the US government is beholden to corporations.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is gearing up to take on Kennedy and other third-party options, including No Labels, a well-funded group working to recruit a centrist ticket. The effort is overseen by veteran strategist Mary Beth Cahill, whose resume includes chief of staff to the late Senator Edward M Kennedy of Massachusetts, another of RFK Jr’s uncles.

Many Democrats blame Green Party candidates for Al Gore’s loss to George W. Bush in 2000 and Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016.

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin has quietly finalized his divorce from Nicole Shanahan, a lawyer and entrepreneur, after allegations that she had an affair with billionaire Elon Musk, Page Six reported. As per court documents, the couple’s divorce was confirmed on May 26. They will now split legal and physical custody of their 4-year-old daughter. 

Though Mr Shanahan did not contest the divorce, she asked the court to award her spousal support, the court papers said. They settled other issues including lawyer fees and division of assets in confidential arbitration.

Notably, the two first started dating in 2015, the same year Mr Brin finalised his divorce from his first wife, Anne Wojcicki, and eventually got married to Nicole Shanahan in 2018, as reported by Business Insider. 

However, they split in 2021 and started living separately, after which Mr. Brin filed for divorce in 2022, citing ”irreconcilable difference”. As per the New York Post, he filed for divorce about a month after his wife allegedly had a brief affair with Elon Musk, with whom he had been friends for years. However, both Mr Musk and Ms Shanahan denied their alleged affair.

”Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night. I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic, ” he wrote on X, on July 25, 2022, in response to a Wall Street Journal article titled”Elon Musk’s Friendship With Sergey Brin Ruptured by Alleged Affair”.

This is total bs. Sergey and I are friends and were at a party together last night!

I’ve only seen Nicole twice in three years, both times with many other people around. Nothing romantic.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2022

Meanwhile, Ms. Shanahan called the scandal ”utterly debilitating”. She insisted that she was never even more than friends with Mr Musk. 

”Did Elon and I have sex, like it was a moment of passion, and then it was over? No. Did we have a romantic relationship? No. We didn’t have an affair,” she claimed in July. However, the Wall Street Journal said that they are ”confident in our sourcing, and we stand by our reporting.”

The 50-year-old Google co-founder is the ninth richest person in the world with a net worth of  $118 billion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Ms. Shanahan, 34, is a California-based attorney and the founder and president of Bia-Echo Foundation, as per her Linkedin profile.