Does RFK Jr. truly live in Westchester? Ruling will decide if he runs for president in NY

KATONAH ‒ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was surely a New Yorker for many years while living in Westchester County and making his name as a crusading environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist.

But the scion of a storied political family sold his Bedford house in 2014 and moved to California, where he and his wife own a 5,900-square foot home they bought for $6.6 million in the tony Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Here's the twist: Kennedy, who's making a longshot bid for president as an independent, listed a Westchester address as his home on his petitions to run in New York and 17 other states. And that dubious residency claim is now at the center of a court case seeking to keep him off New York ballots in November — on the grounds that his stated address is bogus and the petition must be tossed.

The place Kennedy calls his true home is an old four-bedroom house on Croton Lake Road in Katonah, owned by longtime friends of Kennedy's. In court papers, Kennedy says the couple agreed to let him stay in their house when he's in New York after he lost his previous crash pad last year. Another Westchester friend had booted him when he decided to challenge President Joe Biden.

How often he stays there is a mystery. No one was home to answer that question when The Journal News/lohud visited on Friday, and Kennedy's campaign didn't respond when asked.

Barbara Moss, who bought the house 33 years ago and lives there with her husband, Dr. Timothy Haydock, says in a sworn court statement that they keep a bedroom for Kennedy, charge him rent and hold his mail and other deliveries for him. Both have known him for decades.

"Tim and I are happy to provide that arrangement for Mr. Kennedy for as long as he wishes to," Moss said.

But she gave no indication how often he stays in their home.

Battle for the ballot: How did Kennedy's residency issue emerge?

Kennedy's New York petition is being challenged by Clear Choice PAC , a Democratic group waging a state-by-state legal campaign to keep Kennedy and other third-party presidential candidates off ballots . It sees those contenders as potential spoilers who have no chance of winning but who could siphon votes from Biden and help Donald Trump prevail.

Residency is a key part of the group's court challenge in New York. Kennedy doesn't really live at the Moss-Haydock house in northern Westchester — he lives in L.A., Clear Choice's attorneys say. They point out he listed his California home as his address when he opened his federal campaign account to run for president last year.

Their theory: Kennedy fudged his address on his petitions because of a constitutional quirk found in the 12th Amendment. Since both he and his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, live in California, he'd be unable to claim the Golden State's whopping 54 electoral votes if he won there. And so he contrived a New York address "where he has at most only visited," the lawyers say.

A false address alone could disqualify his petition if Clear Choice prevails. But the group also filed a flurry of objections to 102,497 individual petition signatures, alleging more than 40 different types of problems — forged names, illegible writing, questionable voter addresses — to try to quash his petition if the residency argument fails.

What is Kennedy's defense?

Kennedy, who first moved to Westchester from New York City in 1984, insists he always has been and always will be a New Yorker — "at the very marrow of my being."

And he lays out a string of evidence in his statement in court paperwork. He votes in New York. He pays New York income taxes. He has a New York driver's license. He belongs to the bar association in New York, and not in California. Kennedy says he only moved to the Golden State in 2014 so his new wife, Cheryl Hines, could continue her acting career, with the understanding that they will settle in New York when she retires.

He rebuffs the idea his Westchester address was a ruse to skirt the Constitution. He points out he secured his room in the Moss-Haydock home long before he chose Shanahan and the same-state conflict arose. Plus, if he truly was worried about forfeiting California's votes, he could simply have claimed the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts as his home, he adds.

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Kennedy has indeed continued voting in Westchester since he moved in 2014, according to state records, which show he cast ballots in person there twice in 2016 and once in 2018, and by absentee ballot in 2020 — when many New Yorkers voted by mail due to the pandemic. He hasn't voted since the 2020 general election.

Last July, he switched his voter registration address to the Moss-Haydock home, according to Westchester's records. Before then, he was registered at the Bedford home of his friend David Michaelis — the "landlord" who is said to have asked Kennedy to leave shortly before he announced his candidacy in April 2023.

What is the status of Kennedy's petition?

Clear Choice's case is pending in state Supreme Court in Albany after being transferred from Dutchess County, where it originally was filed. At the same time, the state Board of Election is reviewing a separate but similar set of objections by the group and will make its own determination about the petition's validity.

Ultimately, its fate must decided by late summer for the board to certify which presidential candidates will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Clear Choice has lodged a petition challenge in Illinois that also disputes Kennedy's claim to live at the Moss-Haydock house. It's unclear if similar objections have or will be raised in other states as well.

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Does RFK Jr. truly live in Westchester? Ruling will decide if he runs for president in NY