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Unbiased presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes questions from the media after his marketing campaign rally at Legends Occasion Heart on Dec. 20, 2023, in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Photos)
Invoice Walsh picked up a ringing telephone in Deadwood through the fall of 1983 and heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s voice.
“Invoice, I’m off the wagon,” Kennedy mentioned, in response to Walsh. “I’ve obtained a flight coming in tomorrow.”
The 2 had change into mates in 1980. Kennedy campaigned in South Dakota that 12 months for his uncle, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Walsh and RFK Jr. have been fellow Irish-Catholic Democrats, and Walsh was a former priest with expertise counseling addicted individuals. He knew about Kennedy’s struggles and had supplied to quietly assist him search therapy.
Issues didn’t go in response to plan.
Medicine in his baggage
Passengers on Kennedy’s flight to Speedy Metropolis noticed that he was excessive. The flight crew radioed forward to authorities, who let Kennedy go however obtained a search warrant and located heroin in his baggage.
Scott McGregor was a deputy prosecutor within the native state’s lawyer’s workplace. He mentioned it wasn’t troublesome to seek out Kennedy, given the widespread data of Walsh’s political connections.
“I obtained the notion that, properly, why would a Kennedy be popping out right here anyway?” McGregor recalled. “And it crossed my thoughts it needed to be to go see Invoice Walsh.”
Kennedy was charged with felony drug possession, and the story made national news.
Rod Lefholz was the native state’s lawyer on the time. As a Democrat — the final one elected to a Pennington County workplace, so far as he is aware of — he confronted the duty of prosecuting a member of the nation’s most well-known Democratic household.
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Lefholz approached the case like some other and mentioned it proceeded usually, aside from the presence of nationwide media corresponding to Folks journal within the courtroom and letters that arrived by the handfuls from individuals with opinions on the case.
“A few of them needed me to hold him from a lamppost,” Lefholz recalled, “and others mentioned, ‘Why do you retain choosing on the Kennedy household?’”
Ultimately, Kennedy pleaded responsible and averted jail primarily based on quite a lot of situations, together with two years of probation and the completion of dependancy therapy.
He honored the situations, earned his launch from probation a 12 months early and left South Dakota behind — till this week, when his lengthy and unusual journey by way of life introduced him again to the state (in title, at the very least) as a presidential candidate.
His campaign said it turned in 8,000 petition signatures, greater than the three,502 wanted from registered South Dakota voters to make the poll as an impartial. The Secretary of State’s Workplace is reviewing the signatures for authenticity.
A mind worm, a canine (or goat) and a bear
Walsh, now 84, mentioned he stayed in contact with Kennedy for a very long time, although not as a lot recently. Nonetheless, Walsh mentioned he accepted an invite to the launch of Kennedy’s presidential marketing campaign final 12 months, when Kennedy was in search of the Democratic nomination earlier than switching to run as an impartial.
Walsh has at all times felt sympathy for the trauma Kennedy endured throughout and after the assassinations of his father, U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Walsh additionally respects RFK Jr.’s work as an environmental lawyer and agrees with a few of his political opinions.
However, Walsh added, “Each time I feel he is sensible, the subsequent day he’s obtained a worm in his head, or he’s consuming a canine or placing a lifeless bear in Central Park.”
These are all references to information tales about Kennedy from the previous a number of months.
In Might, The New York Times obtained a replica of a deposition Kennedy gave in 2012, when he mentioned earlier bouts of reminiscence loss and psychological fog have been identified as “a worm that obtained into my mind and ate a portion of it after which died.” He has since realized that the parasite “was not the difficulty” along with his mind, he mentioned, and that it was truly associated to metallic toxicity from mercury.
The dog-eating accusation was in a July 2 story in Vanity Fair. Kennedy mentioned the animal within the photograph obtained by the journal was a goat he ate throughout a river journey in Patagonia.
Final Sunday, Kennedy was forced to admit forward of reporting by The New Yorker that he left a lifeless bear cub in Manhattan’s Central Park in 2014 as a result of he thought it might be “amusing.” He picked up the roadkill whereas driving by way of the Hudson Valley and supposed to eat it, he mentioned, however obtained busy and left it within the park as a substitute. When the bear was discovered that 12 months, it sparked a media sensation and a thriller that wasn’t solved till Kennedy’s admission this week.
Nonetheless extra baggage
That’s a small pattern of Kennedy’s alternately tragic, inspiring, weird and troubling life and instances. The extra regarding incidents embrace his rampant spreading of vaccine misinformation — corresponding to his false statement that “there’s no vaccine that’s secure and efficient” — and an allegation that he forcibly groped a girl in her 20s who was working for the Kennedy household as a babysitter through the Nineties. Kennedy has since apologized “for something” he could have accomplished to the lady however mentioned he has “no reminiscence” of the incident.
4 a long time after his drug conviction in Speedy Metropolis, Kennedy says he stays in restoration from dependancy. He deserves credit score for that. However his different private baggage weighs closely on some voters who would possibly in any other case be strongly inclined to help a Kennedy for president.
Simply ask Invoice Walsh, who’s nonetheless very Irish, Catholic and Democratic, and nonetheless keen on RFK Jr. and the broader Kennedy legacy.
None of these loyalties will persuade Walsh to help Kennedy if his title is on the poll Nov. 5.
“I’m not going to vote for him,” Walsh mentioned.
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