Vice President Nicole?

RFK Jr. Picks Tech Maven for Veep

from the campaign website

This afternoon in Oakland, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his pick for his vice-presidential candidate:  Nicole Shanahan.

Shanahan, 38, is the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and a lawyer, an entrepreneur (she founded a company that uses AI to simplify legal processes,) and grew up in Oakland in straitened circumstances.

In fact, she said at the announcement rally, if her family had not had food stamps they would have been in serious trouble.

At first blush, the pick seems a bit odd – an essentially unknown but very rich Silicon Valley mover.  And it seems the campaign knew that could be a problem, with Kennedy’s (lengthy) introduction of her laying out how Shanahan’s current wealth and connections does not tell the whole story.

“Nicole will stand up to Silicon Valley because she knows it inside and out,” Kennedy said, after referring to his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy,, Sr. a “stock manipulator,” was the first person to be put in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As is often said in the public relations world when a reporter becomes a government spokesman:  The best gamekeepers were once poachers.

Kennedy focused on the themes of healing, uniting, and hope, saying both President Biden and Trump represent the DC “uniparty” who tolerate the corporate elite “gorging itself on the bleached bones of the American middle class.”

Both Kennedy and Shanahan also talked about health – a lot.  The “chronic disease epidemic,” clean soil, sustainable agriculture, etc. were topics hit on – a lot, a lot.  How that will play to the public – know-it-all harping or well-intentioned advice – we will see, but, either way, if Kennedy/Shanahan are going to be able to make serious headway they will need to tone that down.

Voters do not like to be nagged and hectored and told they’re fat slugs duped by the processed foods cartels.

On the plus side, both candidates delved into the issue of government  censorship, with Kennedy saying the government is waging an “information war against Americans.”

Shanahan agreed, asking “can you imagine a country whose government doesn’t lie to you?”

The free speech, anti-censorship thrust of the campaign was highlighted by the appearance of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a plaintiff in the anti-censorship lawsuit the US Supreme Court took oral arguments last week.  

“The way the government suppressed dissident voices is by telling social media companies who to censor and what ideas should not be allowed on their platforms,” said Bhattacharya.  “The CDC, the Surgeon General's office, the White House, and even the FBI used back channels into social media companies to censor millions of Americans without anyone knowing it until the Twitter files and court cases blew open the story. Federal judges, looking at the evidence, called the effort an Orwellian Ministry of Truth in the form of a vast censorship industrial complex.”

During her speech, Shanahan showed that she will need improvement in that sphere.  She stared too directly into the teleprompter and occasionally giggled nervously.  Now, it was not “Kamala 2.0” by any stretch of the imagination and could have been merely a case of first night jitters, but it was noticeable.

Shanahan does bring something else to the ticket: money.  A longtime Democratic donor (she announced during her speech she was leaving the party due to its increasing “elitism”) she does have the economic wherewithal (made money on her own and ex-wife of one of the richest people, um, ever) to help the campaign get on all 50 ballots and to at least play in the ad world (Shanahan paid, mostly, for RFK Jr.s Super Bowl ad.)

Both Kennedy and Shanahan asked the crowd to vote with their conscience, to not vote for the “lesser of two evils,” and to “vote FOR someone this time.”

We will see over the coming months how that goes.

Here’s the Shanahan page on the campaign website: 

https://www.kennedy24.com/about-shanahan