Kennedy's super PAC aims to woo voters with 30-minute "infomercial"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s allied super PAC says it’s willing to spend millions of dollars on a 30-minute “infomercial” that will be all about … Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The idea, outlined by the American Values 2024 PAC at an event in midtown Manhattan this week, is unorthodox. Officials said they’re planning to debut the video early next year at red-carpet premieres in New York and Los Angeles to highlight Kennedy’s celebrity support on the coasts.

The plan underscores how Kennedy’s political team is putting his celebrity at the center of his bid, even while presenting the candidate — a scion of Democratic aristocracy — as the anti-establishment, heterodoxical option in the race. Panelists at the event pitched Kennedy, a first-time candidate, as a “danger to the 1 percent,” a fighter for “every child, born and unborn” and someone who would close the border if elected.

The infomercial “is a 30-minute state-of-the-art compilation that’s meant to explain to the public who Bobby Kennedy really is in the face of just an incredible barrage of lies,” PAC co-founder Tony Lyons said in an interview with POLITICO.

“If we had $100 million, we would run the whole 30 minutes [on television] and pay whatever it costs,” he said.

But even if they don't get the $100 million budget, American Values 2024 already has plans to present Kennedy’s résumé as an environmental lawyer and opponent to corporate corruption.

The PAC outlined this strategy at an event launching its African American and Latino voter outreach strategy, hoping to build on Kennedy's historic levels of third-party support (24 percent in the recent poll of six battleground states from the New York Times and 22 percent in the most recent Quinnipiac survey of registered voters). American Values PAC reported nearly $9 million cash on hand in the middle of this year.

Officials with Kennedy’s super PAC framed their investments not just as part of an effort to win over voters but to defend their candidate from attacks against him.

“People have been subjected to this incredible brainwashing. I mean, this is like 1984-level brainwashing,” Lyons, who is also the publisher of Kennedy’s books, said. “I don't really know how to quickly explain to [people] that that isn’t true … you have to almost feel for them that they just can't really get the truth.”

A 30-minute infomercial is not unheard of in presidential politics. Then-candidate Barack Obama aired one at the tail end of his 2008 run for the White House, using his well-stuffed coffers to fund a massive TV onslaught in the campaign’s closing days.

When pressed for specifics on how to attract an audience for such a long video, Lyons said the PAC would also make shorter versions ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes to share on social media, something that Lyons predicted would make Kennedy's polling numbers "go way up." The PAC also plans to buy or rent the campaign’s email list to encourage those supporters to host watch parties for it.

Negative “hit pieces” and attacks on Kennedy will fade in impact, Lyons said.

“After all of this real disinformation, people are sort of at the point — and it happened with Donald Trump, too — they get to a point where they've just been inundated with it, and they don't believe it anymore," Lyons said. "And it begins to have the opposite effect.”