The Shanahan Persuasion Campaign

nicole shanahan
This anti-R.F.K. coalition is now locked in an interesting debate over how cruelly to nuke someone who was, until recently, one of their own. Photo: Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The Democratic National Committee
Theodore Schleifer
April 17, 2024

The murderer’s row of Democratic operatives working to tank Robert Kennedy Jr.’s third-party presidential bid couldn’t help but roll their eyes last week when Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna sent a letter (and planted a story about it) to Nicole Shanahan, whom R.F.K. named as his running mate in late March, asking her to drop off the ticket. Of course, plenty of Democrats complained to me, here was Khanna, a notorious publicity hound, eagerly doing the bidding of the ultra-aggressive MoveOn—a stunt that would only provoke Shanahan to dig in her heels. Then, a few days later, there was the ubiquitous James Carville emailing Anne Wojcicki—the prominent Silicon Valley executive whose ex-husband, Sergey Brin, later married (and divorced) Shanahan—looking for salacious oppo on the candidate’s personal life, a fishing expedition that promptly leaked (without Wojcicki’s name). More complaints…