Robert F Kennedy Jr names tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as 2024 running mate

Robert F Kennedy Jr selected Nicole Shanahan, a tech attorney and wealthy philanthropist, as his running mate in an independent campaign that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.

Kennedy, an environmental attorney who gained notoriety as a vaccine sceptic and conspiracy theorist, announced his pick at a campaign event on Tuesday in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was born.

In a nearly hour-long, winding speech, Kennedy cited Shanahan’s career in technology as an asset for the campaign, Kennedy said she had “deep inside knowledge of how big tech uses AI to manipulate” voters.

Shanahan was the founder and CEO of the Palo Alto legal tech firm ClearAccessIP before selling the company in 2020. She was also a fellow at Stanford Law School’s center for legal informatics.

“I managed to put a technologist at the forefront,” Kennedy said. “I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance, and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people.”

Kennedy, 70, a scion of the US political dynasty that includes former president John F Kennedy, also presented Shanahan, 38, as a fresh and youthful voice in a presidential contest between 81-year-old Joe Biden and 77-year-old Donald Trump.

“There’s a growing number of millennials and gen Z Americans who have lost faith in their future and lost their pride in our country,” he said.

The announcement event took place in the Henry J Kaiser Center for the Arts, a historic building in Oakland that has been in disrepair for decades but is on the path to being reopened. Speaking at the event, rightwing author Angela Stanton-King said the venue had been opened to the campaign despite being partially under construction, and was chosen due to the historical events it had hosted – including a speech by Martin Luther King Jr in 1962.

The event featured an introduction from the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe, whose battle for federal recognition has been supported by Kennedy, and musical renditions of This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful. Speakers included the Stanford professor and Covid-lockdown skeptic Jay Battacharya as well as Kelly Ryerson, a public health advocate who focuses on chronic illnesses she says are caused by toxins in our food supplies.

More than two hours into the lengthy announcement event, after most cable news channels had cut away from the stream, the ex-NBA player Metta Sandiford-Artest, formerly known as Metta World Peace, welcomed Shanahan to the stage. The vice-presidential hopeful explained her political mission, citing her strong anti-war beliefs as aligning with Kennedy’s. She soon launched into an anti-pharmaceuticals screed, attributing her passion for “children’s health” to her child’s experience with autism.

Democrats are especially concerned that Kennedy could pull votes away from Biden, spoiling the election. Recent polling from Quinnipiac projected Kennedy could receive as much as 15% of the vote in a race involving Biden and Trump, amid limited enthusiasm for the candidates from the two major parties.

One such defector was Marilyn Chin, a volunteer for Kennedy’s campaign recruiting voters outside the event. Chin, who is 71, said she voted Democratic for most of her life but was now supporting Kennedy.

“Get out of the duopoly,” she said. “Don’t vote Republican, don’t vote Democrat, start looking for something else.”

Related: Judge imposes gag order on Trump in hush-money trial – live

Kennedy will face an expensive, and uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states, which will involve gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures. He has made it on to the ballot in only one state so far, Utah. Still, the Democratic National Committee has called Kennedy a “stalking horse” and said third-party candidates may have tipped the 2016 election to Trump.

In a statement following Kennedy’s announcement, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign called him a “radical leftist” and an “environmental whack job” before stating his campaign would not get very far. The Democratic National Committee called Kennedy’s run a “spoiler campaign” and said it was dangerous for Republican donors to be propping up Kennedy during such a high-stakes election.

Earlier this year, the DNC filed a federal election complaint accusing Kennedy and a political action committee backing his third-party bid of illegally colluding to qualify for the ballot in swing states crucial to Biden’s re-election. Kennedy’s campaign has denied breaching financial barriers between candidates and outside groups, which is prohibited by federal campaign law.

The Democrats have also said that a major donor to American Values 2024, the Super Pac backing Kennedy, is Tim Mellon, a businessman who has also backed Trump.

Shanahan told the New York Times she has contributed $4m to American Values 2024.

The Bay Area entrepreneur is known in tech circles as the founder of ClearAccessIP, a startup that uses software to help companies manage and distribute patents and patent rights. But she gained notoriety after her 2018 marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the wealthiest people in the world. The couple’s divorce in 2022 drew extra scrutiny following a Wall Street Journal report that Shanahan had conducted an affair with the Tesla and X chief, Elon Musk. She has denied the allegations.

In February, she helped finance a $5m campaign advertisement for Kennedy during the Super Bowl, which alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run. The ad was denounced by Kennedy’s family, who have disavowed his campaign and his baseless theories on vaccines and the Covid pandemic, among other issues.

Shanahan told the New York Times that she was not an anti-vaxxer, but has shared Kennedy’s discredited claims about the safety of vaccinations. At Tuesday’s event, she formally renounced any affiliation with the Democratic party, saying it had “lost its way”.

“The Democratic party is supposed to be the party of compassion and peace, it is supposed to be the party of diplomacy and science,” she said. “While I know those ideals still abide within many Democrats, I want to point out that the party has lost its way. In its leadership, in its institutions, it has become interested in elitism, celebrity and winning at all costs, even if that means turning a blind eye on issues they all know to be true.”

Kennedy’s anti-vaccination views drew protesters at Tuesday’s announcement, including Wendy Bloom, a registered nurse who has worked in pediatric cancer units for 37 years, who stood outside the Oakland convention center with pro-Biden and pro-vaccine signs.

“Besides being anti-vaccines, he’s not pro-science, and anti-research,” she said. She also dismissed the choice of Shanahan as a running mate.

“His choice of VP tells us everything we need to know,” Bloom said. “She has no experience. She’s just a wealthy individual who can help raise money. Voters deserve someone with experience.”