Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets spot on Michigan's ballot as Natural Law Party nominee

Lansing — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom some experts view as a potential spoiler in this year's race for the White House, will be the Natural Law Party's nominee for president in Michigan.

Kennedy's campaign announced the news Thursday, a day after members of the Natural Law Party in Michigan held a convention where they officially picked him.

The arrangement gives Kennedy, the nephew of slain President John F. Kennedy, an official spot on the ballot in Michigan, and it provides the relatively obscure Natural Law Party with a high-profile name to be their standard-bearer.

“He’s the most qualified candidate in the modern-day history of America,” said Doug Dern, chairman of the Natural Law Party, according to a press release from Kennedy's campaign.

In an interview, Dern said he had been approached by both Kennedy's campaign and the presidential campaign of progressive activist Cornel West.

Dern said he met with Kennedy and determined Kennedy was exactly what the party was looking for in a candidate.

Kennedy, who has argued the country's two-party system is broken, is known for his vocal criticism of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic and his efforts to protect the environment as an activist and lawyer.

The Natural Law Party is one of five minor parties qualified to appear on Michigan's 2024 ballot, according to a 2023 publication by the Secretary of State's office. The others are the Libertarian, Green, U.S. Taxpayers and Working Class parties.

However, Mark Brewer, an election lawyer and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said on Thursday night that he had been hired by a national group called Clear Choice to challenge Kennedy's position on the battleground state's ballot.

In 2020, the Natural Law Party's presidential nominee, Rocky De La Fuente, got fewer than 3,000 votes, or 0.05%, in Michigan. Dern said Kennedy will be the party's most well-known nominee since activist and author Ralph Nader in 2008. That year, Nader got 33,085 votes in Michigan, or 0.7%.

"We've really fallen out of the limelight," Dern said of the party.

The Natural Law Party's website touts plans to lower taxes, to make teaching "an honored profession with commensurate compensation" and to enact programs "to reduce stress in the individual and throughout society."

Kennedy is working to make the November ballot in all 50 states and his candidacy could give voters an alternative in November in what's expected to be a close contest between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.

More:Biden scores endorsements from Kennedy family, looking to shore up support against Trump and RFK Jr

If Kennedy hadn't been the nominee of a third party in Michigan, he would have had to collect 12,000 valid petition signatures and turn them into the Secretary of State's office by 4 p.m. July 18 to make the ballot.

In 2016, when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes in Michigan, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein combined to capture 188,275 votes.

cmauger@detroitnews.com