Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stay on Kansas ballot. Could he be a Trump campaign spoiler? | Opinion

Kansas voters have the opportunity to do the most hilarious thing in November: They can give the Sunflower State’s Electoral College votes to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Or, at the very least, they can keep those votes from going to Donald Trump.

Sound crazy? Sure. Absolutely.

After all, Kennedy just “suspended” his presidential campaign — a nice way of saying he dropped out of the race — and threw his support to Trump.

By staying in the campaign, Kennedy said, “I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues.”

Which is funny, because his presidential bid originally started as a challenge to President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party nomination. Remember that?

He then became an “independent” to continue his campaign when it quickly became clear he would get no traction in the Democratic primaries.

And now he is backing the Republican nominee.

Heck, Kennedy — best known for his vaccine denialism, his weird “prank” with the body of a dead bear cub, as well as for his famous name — is even on Trump’s presidential transition team now. Which means he might have a big hand in shaping the policies and personnel in the next White House.

It’s proof that the GOP these days is a “big tent” for cranks and goofballs of all sorts.

That’s no surprise. Trump has his own lengthy record of fraud, sexual assault and felonious hush money payments, all proven in civil and criminal courts. He dined with well-known antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. There’s the whole Jan. 6 thing.

When the guy at the top of the ticket has all that on his resume, there’s really not much room to keep anybody else out of the party, is there?

So here is the really interesting part: At least for now, RFK Jr. remains on the Kansas presidential ballot for November.

Red state poll strength for RFK Jr.

It’s true. The Kansas Secretary of State’s office on Friday announced that Kennedy’s team had collected the 5,000 signatures required for an independent candidate to appear on the state’s presidential ballot.

And on Wednesday, the office announced it had received the slate of presidential electors for the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties — and also for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

He’s on the ballot. And it’s not clear that Kennedy can get off now, even if he wants to.

“There really isn’t a mechanism” in Kansas law for a candidate to be removed from the presidential ballot once they’ve been confirmed, department spokesman John Milburn told me. “He’s pretty much there.”

Kennedy has worked to remove his name from the ballot in battleground states, not wanting to spoil Trump’s chances of winning in those places.

But as The Topeka Capital-Journal’s Jack Harvel noted this week, “Kansas is not one of the states the Kennedy campaign is worried about spoiling.”

Which makes sense. Kansas hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Democrat since 1964.

We vote Republican. Always have. Always will. We’re kind of famous for it.

So why does any of this matter?

Here’s why: Kansas doesn’t get polled that often. But back in April, the firm John Zogby Strategies — which has done work for RFK Jr.’s campaign — surveyed Kansans about how Kennedy would perform in a presidential campaign here.

In a head-to-head matchup with Trump, Kennedy lost by a mere two percentage points, 44-42. And he beat Biden (remember when he was running for reelection?) by a whopping 12 points.

So there could be an awful lot of Kennedy-curious voters out there on the Great Plains.

Maybe even enough to unexpectedly make things uncomfortable for Trump.

Nah. It almost certainly won’t happen.

But it does suggest that Kansas support for Trump might be a little squishier than you might expect from the state’s deep-red reputation. And it’s not like third-party spoilers don’t play a role here now and again: Kansas Republicans are still mad at state Sen. Dennis Pyle for undermining Derek Schmidt’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign.

Democrat Laura Kelly won that election. Kansas Democrats won’t get that lucky again this year. But it’s fun to think about. Kennedy is on the ballot, after all. Anything can happen from there.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.