Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday in Oakland he was picking one of his presidential campaign’s major financial backers, lawyer and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, to join him as the vice presidential candidate on his ticket for his long shot White House bid.

“As recently, as a year ago, I really didn't think much of Bobby Kennedy because I didn't know much about him. All I had was a mainstream media narrative that was effectively telling me horrible disparaging things,” Shanhan said at the Oakland rally. “I discovered a person who speaks out on issues that, even though they are critically important to human health and welfare, are consistently ignored by our government.”

“And for the first time, in a long time, I felt hope for our democracy again,” she added.

Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and Kennedy family scion, said he picked Shanahan because she shares his views on health, artificial intelligence, the regulatory state, immigration and other issues. He also cited her experience as a “gifted administrator” and passion for athletics, as well as her relative youth. The 38-year-old has never held elected office.

“I’m so proud to introduce to you the next vice president of the United States: my fellow lawyer, a brilliant scientist, technologist, a fierce warrior mom, Nicole Shanahan,” Kennedy said.

Shanahan gave $4 million to an outside super PAC backing Kennedy earlier this year to fund a Super Bowl ad, telling the New York Times she aided in the ad’s production. The frequent Democratic donor and Oakland native has worked as a lawyer in the tech industry and was previously married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

She now leads Bia-Echo Foundation, an organization she founded to direct money toward issues including women’s reproductive science, criminal justice reform and environmental causes. She is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant.

“Nicole and I both left the Democratic Party," Kennedy said in Oakland. "Our values didn’t change, the Democratic Party did.”

Shanhan previously donated to Democratic presidential candidates in 2020, including Marianne Williamson and now-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. After Joe Biden secured the Democratic nomination that year, she donated $25,000 to one of his campaign accounts and $5,600 to another, federal campaign finance records show. The same day she donated $19,400 to the Democratic National Committee.

In 2016, she financially supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“Even though I am leaving the party, I believe I am taking the best ideals and impulses with me,” Shanahan said, dubbing Kennedy as the only “anti-war” candidate in the race. “It wasn't until I met Bobby and the people supporting him that I felt any hope in the outcome of this election.”

Kennedy's campaign has spooked Democrats, who are fighting third-party options that could draw support from President Joe Biden and help Republican former President Donald Trump. As they head into a 2020 rematch, Biden and Trump are broadly unpopular with the U.S. public and will compete for the votes of people who aren't enthusiastic about either of them, according to polling.

National general election polls in the last month have shown Kennedy polling percentages as high as the mid-teens. Kennedy argued he would end the “duopoly” of the Republican and Democratic parties, urging supporters to “take a risk” and join him in launching a “new American Revolution.”

“We're going to forge an unstoppable coalition of homeless Democrats and homeless Republicans who are ready to look at the universal values that unite us all,” Kennedy said. “We've all had the advantage of seeing what President Trump and President Biden can do for our country. Do any of you want more of the same. If you want more of the same, you should vote out of fear.”

The DNC organized a press call in the hours to make their case moments after Shanahan left the stage to level their attacks on Kennedy and his new running mate. California Rep. Robert Garcia, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow participated in the call, a lineup of what Democrats called their “rising stars.”

“I am personally quite offended and just disgusted by his campaign. I lost both of my parents during the pandemic to COVID,” Garcia said. “My mom was a health care worker. These are folks that would have taken the vaccine on day one. Of course, it wasn't ready at that time.”

“And so to have someone running for the presidency that disparages vaccines, that is causing harm to people, like my family, like two parents that I lost during this pandemic, is disgusting and shameful,” he added.

The Biden campaign did not respond to the announcement directly, nor did Biden address it at public appearances on Tuesday. But former President Donald Trump’s Republican campaign for president issued a statement calling Kennedy “a radical leftist” and “an environmental whack job.”

Without the backing of a party — he briefly ran as a Democrat before launching an independent bid — Kennedy faces an arduous task to get on the ballot, with varying rules across the 50 states. He’s picking a running mate now because about half of the states require him to designate one before he can apply for ballot access. His campaign pledged on Tuesday they would be on the ballot in every state.

The running mate requirement is already bedeviling Kennedy's ballot access effort in Nevada, where Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a March 7 letter to independent candidates that they must nominate a vice presidential candidate before collecting signatures. The letter came days after Kennedy's campaign announced he'd collected enough signatures in the state. If Aguilar's opinion survives a likely legal challenge, Kennedy will have to start again in collecting just over 10,000 signatures in the state.

"This is the epitome of corruption,” said Paul Rossi, a Kennedy campaign lawyer, in a statement Monday, accusing Aguilar of doing the bidding of the DNC.

Kennedy has secured access to the ballot in Utah. He and an allied super PAC, American Values 2024, say they’ve collected enough signatures to qualify in several other states, including swing states Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, but election officials there have not yet signed off.

In advance of the event Tuesday in Oakland, Kennedy and his aides had circulated the names of several contenders, including celebrities with no political experience. Those names include NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, “Dirty Jobs” star Mike Rowe and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who was a wrestler and actor.

“I wanted a vice president who shared my passion for wholesome healthy foods, chemical-free, regenerative agriculture for good soils,” Kennedy said. “I found exactly the right person.”

Kennedy has built a reputation as an activist, author and lawyer who fought for environmental causes such as clean water. But he has spent decades spreading anti-vaccine disinformation and conspiracies, contradicting long-accepted scientific consensus. He has falsely claimed that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to harm white and Black people, while largely sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. Last year, he said “no vaccine is safe or effective.”

Earlier this year, Shanahan said she was “not an anti-vaxxer” but wanted more examination of the dangers of vaccines, which have been used safely by billions of humans to prevent life-threatening diseases for decades. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four million deaths worldwide “are prevented by childhood vaccination every year.”

On Tuesday, she cited a favorite topic of Kennedy’s, chronic disease, as one reason for supporting his cause. She mentioned her daughter, who has autism, and said she did her own research to find the source of chronic disease. She concluded, and said so in her speech, that pollutants, much of modern medicine — including “shot on top of another shot throughout the course of childhood” — and “electromagnetic pollution” were the causes of chronic disease. Among those diseases, she mentioned allergies, obesity, anxiety and depression.

While pollutants in water, air and food undoubtedly can affect the health of humans, there is no scientific consensus that “electromagnetic pollution” — which Shanahan described as “electrical interference” from wireless devices — causes measurable harm. Wireless devices are ubiquitous to American society and have been for decades. The CDC says “we do not have the science to link health problems to cell phone use,” for example.

“We will find the answers to our most pressing health concerns within weeks, not decades,” Shanahan claimed. “It is time to move out of the dark ages of medicine.”

Kennedy is a descendant of a storied Democratic family that includes his father, Robert F. Kennedy, who was a U.S. senator, attorney general and presidential candidate, and his uncle former President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was a teenager when his father, known as RFK, was assassinated during his own presidential campaign in 1968. 

Some members of his family have publicly criticized the independent presidential candidate’s views. Dozens of Kennedy family members sent a message when they posed with Biden at a St. Patrick’s Day reception at the White House in a photo his sister Kerry Kennedy posted to social media.

“From one big Irish Catholic family to another, it’s great to have the Kennedys here,” Biden said to the Kennedy contingent during one event that day. At another event, the president told the family members “welcome almost home” and said “it wouldn’t be St. Patrick’s Day without you.”

Two hours before RFK Jr.’s rally on Tuesday was scheduled to begin at a performing arts venue, a handful of supporters were lined up outside. Broken-down cars, discarded bicycles, tents and all manner of household goods took up the sidewalk and a park directly outside, a visual reminder of the housing crisis that has plagued California.

Dozens of men in black suits made up a heavy security presence for a candidate who has loudly complained that he has not been granted protection from the U.S. Secret Service. RFK Jr.’s campaign has spent millions of dollars with the security company owned by Gavin de Becker, who has been a major donor to his campaign and associated super PAC.

RFK Jr. is leveraging a network of loyal supporters he's built over years, many of them drawn to his anti-vaccine activism and his message that the U.S. government is beholden to corporations.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is gearing up to take on Kennedy and other third-party options, including No Labels, a well-funded group working to recruit a centrist ticket. The effort is overseen by veteran strategist Mary Beth Cahill, whose resume includes chief of staff to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, another of RFK Jr.'s uncles.

“The principle technique is to call me a spoiler and instill fear in Americans that voting for me, we'll get some other terrifying candidate elected,” RFK Jr. said on Tuesday. “Our campaign is a spoiler. I agree with that. It is a spoiler for President Biden and for President Trump."