RFK Jr. to be on Maryland ballot as independent presidential candidate despite suspending campaign

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has collected enough signatures to be on the Maryland ballot as a presidential candidate, state election officials said Tuesday.

The announcement comes after Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign Friday and endorsed former President Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president.

Kennedy needed 10,000 signatures to appear on Maryland's ballot, and elections officials verified more than 15,000, according to a letter released Tuesday by Jared DeMarinis, the state elections administrator. Supporters collected more than 27,000 signatures.

Kennedy will remain on the Maryland ballot, despite ending his national campaign. Although Kennedy has said he would try to remove his name from the ballot in battleground states, he has made clear that he wasn't formally ending his bid and said his supporters could continue to back him in the majority of states where they are unlikely to sway the outcome.

Maryland is a deep blue state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1. Joe Biden, a Democrat, won Maryland with 65% of the vote in the 2020 presidential election, compared with 32% for Trump.

Kennedy has said his internal polls had shown that his presence in the race would hurt Trump and help Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, though recent public polls don't provide a clear indication that he is having an outsize impact on support for either major-party candidate.