As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign ran up debts and spent heavily on ballot access, security and consultants, he received a lifeline at the end of March in the form of a $2 million cash infusion from his newly minted running mate, Nicole Shanahan, a new campaign filing shows.
Mr. Kennedy’s campaign reported raising $5.4 million in March, including the money from Ms. Shanahan, which was recorded on March 27 — the day after he announced her as his running mate.
The campaign reported spending $4.5 million in March, an increase from the previous month, and listed $1.6 million in debts, all of which were payments owed to Mr. Kennedy’s security consultant, Gavin de Becker, the filing to the Federal Election Commission shows.
The campaign has paid Mr. de Becker’s firm $2.5 million over the past year.
The campaign ended the month with $6 million on hand, according to the filing.
Under federal law, candidates can inject unlimited money into their own campaigns, and are not subject to the $6,600 individual limits for general-election contributions. Ms. Shanahan, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer and investor, was until last year married to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Ms. Shanahan, 38, has already supported Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy with a $4 million contribution to a super PAC backing him — that money went toward a Super Bowl ad that Ms. Shanahan helped conceive of earlier this year.
Among other major expenses in March, the campaign paid $326,000 for “campaign consulting” to Accelevate 2020, a ballot-access and signature-gathering company in Texas.
Getting his presidential ticket on the ballot, particularly in battleground states, is Mr. Kennedy’s most pressing task as he looks to take on both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.
Gaining ballot access is often expensive and convoluted, and Mr. Kennedy is seeking to do it in all 50 states through a combination of independent petitions and third-party nominations.
