Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced his running mate at a rally in Oakland today. She is an unconventional choice, but not a surprising one, since Kennedy tipped his hand yesterday on this very program.
His vice presidential selection is Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old lawyer and tech entrepreneur from Oakland. She went to St. Mary’s High School, then the University of Puget Sound, then got her law degree at Santa Clara. She made a lot of money founding a startup that used artificial intelligence to help manage patents, and married Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
They had a daughter but Brin divorced Shanahan after just a few years. She leads a private foundation and has funded a lot of work at Stanford and the Buck Institute. So she has deep ties to Silicon Valley and philanthropy, access to many millions of dollars, and is the mother of a young girl on the autism spectrum.
But she has no experience in politics or government and would be the youngest vice president in history, not to mention the first who is half Chinese. It was pretty clear today though that she’s quite simpatico with Kennedy on many issues, most notably skepticism about vaccines and childhood disease, Patti and Bret.
For more on this, KCBS Political Reporter Doug Sovern spoke with Anchors Bret Burkhart and Patti Reising.