Written by by Evan Symon at californiaglobe.com
During a rally in Oakland on Tuesday, Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. selected Oakland native and tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as his running mate for the 2024 election.
Who Kennedy would select as a running mate had drawn more and more interest in recent months because of his rise in the polls.
While Kennedy’s popularity ranges wildly, on average, he is getting above 10% in polling, a threshold not reached since the Ross Perot campaign in 1992. Should he get ballot access to more states and keep this percentage going into later in the year, he could get enough to qualify for the debates.
Months of speculation finally brought forward a short list of candidates earlier this month. Besides Shanahan, the list included Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D), former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura (D), former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, NFL Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and motivational speaker Tony Robbins. However, following Shanahan’s payment of a $4 million Super Bowl ad for Kennedy and the announcement city of Kennedy’s pick being revealed to be Oakland, many quickly zeroed in on the Oakland native as the likely pick.
On Tuesday, the rumors were confirmed as Kennedy announced her as his Vice Presidential pick.
Born in Oakland in 1985, Shanahan would go on to graduate from the University of Puget Sound with a Bachelor’s degree, followed by Santa Clara University with a law degree. For several years she was a patent lawyer in Palo Alto, even founding her own firm, and in 2018 married Google co-founder Sergey Brin. In 2020, she sold her legal practice and got involved more with tech companies and started up her own, Bia-Echo, a company dedicated to helping women get pregnant later in life.
During this time she also increased her political stature as a major donor. While she contributed to campaigns in the 2010s, she began donating bigger figures starting in 2020 by giving $150,000 to George Gascon’s campaign to become DA of Los Angeles County. She also gave sizable donations to Joe Biden’s and Pete Buttigieg’s respective campaigns in 2020.