NC voters will have more choices than ever in the presidential election. Who is running?
In November, North Carolina is expected to have the largest number of presidential candidates in the state’s history.
Five minor-party candidates, whose ideologies range from far-right to far-left, are expected to appear alongside Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump on the 2024 ballot. This would give voters seven choices in total for president.
This will beat the state’s record for most-ever presidential candidates, which topped out at six in 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Jimmy Carter were joined on North Carolina’s ballot by independent, Libertarian, Socialist Workers and Citizens Party candidates.
The ballot is still being finalized, but the first absentee ballots will be sent to voters on Sept. 6.
Some of this year’s candidates secured their spot on the ballot with relative ease, while others spent months collecting signatures, making their case to elections boards and fighting in court.
Here are the third-party presidential candidates North Carolina voters can expect to see on their ballot in November.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., We The People Party
Kennedy, the son of former U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, initially entered the race as a Democratic primary opponent to President Joe Biden, but later decided to run as a third-party candidate.
He is an environmental lawyer and the founder of an anti-vaccine advocacy group called Children’s Health Defense. The group has spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccine, the Associated Press reported.
The State Board of Elections initially voted against certifying Kennedy’s new party, called “We The People,” in a 3-2 vote led by the board’s Democrats, who said Kennedy was skirting the rules for getting on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate. While the state requires fewer than 14,000 signatures to certify a new party, it takes over 80,000 to run as an unaffiliated candidate.
The board later reversed its decision, though Chair Alan Hirsch, a Democrat, said he still thought there had been “subterfuge” in the party’s petition process.
Shortly after, the North Carolina Democratic Party sued to get Kennedy off the ballot. A judge ruled against them this week, allowing Kennedy to stay on the ballot.
Chase Oliver, Libertarian Party
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Oliver became a Libertarian political activist after working in the restaurant business for over a decade.
Oliver ran for U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2022, winning 2% of the popular vote — which helped send Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker to a runoff election. His campaign made Oliver the first openly gay Senate candidate in Georgia’s history.
His platform focuses on reducing inflation, lowering health care costs and abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.
Oliver has described himself as a “pro-gun, pro-police reform, pro-choice Libertarian” who is “armed and gay.”
Libertarians were already a certified political party this year in North Carolina, so Oliver’s campaign did not need to collect signatures to get on the ballot.
Jill Stein, Green Party
Stein is a progressive political activist who also ran as the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2012 and 2016.
After getting her start in environmental activism, Stein ran her first political campaign in the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election as a Green-Rainbow candidate.
Since then, Stein has become the face of the Green Party, running on a pro-environment, anti-war platform.
In 2017, The Washington Post reported that a U.S. Senate committee was investigating Stein’s presidential campaign. Reports commissioned by the Senate found that a Russian company used social media to amplify Stein’s campaign.
Stein’s campaign said she cooperated with the probe.
The Green Party was already a certified political party in North Carolina, so her campaign did not have to collect signatures to get on the ballot this year.
Randall Terry, Constitution Party
Terry is an anti-abortion activist running with the conservative Constitution Party.
He has been a prominent figure in the anti-abortion movement for decades, having created an advocacy organization called Operation Rescue in 1987 that was known for blocking the entrances to abortion clinics.
His campaign website notes that he has been arrested 49 times and has spent over a year in several prisons.
Terry’s website describes him as a “lethal weapon to the enemies of God” and says his goal is to “raise up an army of righteous leaders and activists.”
The Constitution Party was certified by the State Board of Elections this summer after initially being denied over questions about the address of its chair, Al Pisano.
The party supports a variety of right-wing policy positions, such as banning abortion, pulling out of the United Nations and upholding the “traditional nuclear family, consisting of one man and one woman joined by marriage,” per its website.
Cornel West, Justice for All Party
West is an academic whose work has centered on class, race and gender.
His website says the campaign’s aim “is and will always be to unite in solidarity with movements of truth and justice, who seek a choice beyond empire, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and the confines of the corporate-dominated two-party system.”
Despite his campaign’s left-wing platform, reporting from The N&O and national outlets has found that Republican lawyers and operatives have aided West’s efforts to achieve ballot access.
The State Board of Elections voted against certifying West’s new “Justice For All” party, but its decision was overturned by a Wake County judge who ordered the board to place West on the ballot.
Write-in candidates
In addition to the third-party candidates, two write-in candidates have been certified as presidential candidates this year.
In order to qualify as a write-in, presidential candidates must submit 500 voter signatures to the State Board of Elections. These candidates won’t actually appear on the ballot, but voters can write their names in.
Claudia De La Cruz is a left-wing activist who is affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation — though that party is not officially recognized in North Carolina.
Shiva Ayyadurai is an engineer and anti-vaccine activist who previously ran as a Republican in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts.
