American Values Super PAC Raises $5.86 Million at Los Angeles Fundraiser and Celebration of Kennedy's 70th Birthday

Behind the Scenes with columnist David Talbot

By David Talbot, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon 

It was Bobby’s night. Yes, some 230 people crowded into a banquet room at the London Hotel in West Los Angeles on January 22, among them Oliver Stone, Mel Gibson and basketball legend John Stockton. Yes, the American Values 2024 super PAC (our funder) raised a whopping $5.86 million, according to event organizers. Yes, a gaggle of Kennedys — some seven or eight family members by my count — posed for photos onstage (memo to media). And yes, a lot of people flew in for the occasion, including comedian Theo Von. But the evening belonged to the man celebrating his 70^th birthday.

RFK Jr., who has been a featured speaker at many such events, clearly found this party “an incredibly emotional event,” as he said from the stage in his closing speech. “You are all my family,” he told the crowd in a voice heavy with feeling. “I’d be nothing without you.”

In launching his presidential campaign after the “mass medical experiment’’ that the country was put through during the Covid lockdown, Kennedy decided to subject the nation to a different experiment. Like his father during his 1968 presidential campaign, he decided to “speak the truth.” Like his father, RFK Jr. has now embarked on a “heroic journey.”

Many speakers during the evening stressed Bobby’s integrity, courage, honesty and character, saying all this made him stand out in the political arena. Tony Lyons, a friend and publisher of Bobby’s, as well as co-founder of the American Values 24 super PAC, said that Bobby is known for “fighting for controversial causes that nobody else wants to,’’ including environmental, medical and political battles.

Campaign manager Amaryllis Fox Kennedy urged the audience to seize the moment. Quoting from the Old Testament’s Book of Esther, she said, ‘’You are here for such a time as this.”

Von injected a humorous note into the evening, saying that he found Kennedy ‘‘an interesting dude.’’

‘’He makes me feel that we have a chance,’’ Von said, ‘’that the underdogs are going to be overdogs.’’

As the crowd chatted and a musical mix played on the loudspeakers — songs by Sinatra and Darin as well as hip-hop — I spoke to a woman seated next to me at dinner. Julie Stewart, a healthcare consultant who had flown in from Atlanta despite not knowing Bobby personally, said she started supporting Kennedy after hearing about his concern for children hurt by vaccines that were not fully tested for safety. Stewart’s son became autistic at age 5, but after she found a doctor who helped him, he is now well and on the diving team at Texas A&M. She said she’s supporting the campaign because RFK Jr. ‘’is a truth-teller and we need more of that.’’

After the event, I spoke in the hotel bar with party guest Romeo Keyes, a 26-year-old writer and activist, wearing dreadlocks and a gray suit. He told me that he and his friends liked Bobby because ‘’he is so much out of the realm of the norm. He is the most inclusive guy in the country. No other candidate goes into the ghetto or talks to the Native people. We need a leader who wants to lead a country, not a demographic.’’