Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters at a rally in Aurora on Sunday that his candidacy can mend a deeply divided country by focusing on what unites Americans.

“Do you want a president who’s going to make Americans forget that they’re Democrats and forget that they’re Republicans, and remember that we are all Americans?” Kennedy asked a cheering crowd of more than a thousand people, who packed a converted airplane hangar at Stanley Marketplace. “That’s why you’re here today. I’m going to do that for this country.”

The environmental attorney and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families said that reelecting either President Joe Biden or former President Trump to another term won’t bring the change he said voters have told him they want since he launched his campaign a year ago.

“If we give them another four years, either one of them, we’re going to see more of the same,” he said to groans from the crowd. “Do you want to see more of the same? You elect me president, everything’s going to change.”

Attendees at the rally suggest Kennedy could draw support from both sides of the political spectrum.

Carol Depres, who brought her twin 7-year-old daughters to the rally, said she voted for Biden in the last election but has soured on the Democratic Party.

“The DNC wants to clamp down, to create a coronation for Biden, and it’s obvious people don’t want Biden,” Depres said, adding that Kennedy “can draw from both the left and the right.”

“I used to be a staunch Democrat,” said Depres. “I’m not anymore. I totally resonate with what he’s saying.”

Steve Monahan, the GOP’s 2022 nominee in the 6th Congressional District, told Colorado Politics he’s still a Republican but attended the rally to support Kennedy in his “personal capacity.”

“Kennedy seems to be the only person talking about the issues where everyone in America knows something’s wrong,” said Monahan, who noted that he had already signed Kennedy’s petition. “He’s the only one articulating it with any knowledge and vision of how to handle it.”

Kennedy, who launched his campaign as a Democrat but declared last fall that he was instead running as an independent, held the rally to kick off a statewide petition drive to get on Colorado’s fall ballot, which could help the candidate secure a spot in next month’s inaugural presidential debate.

Kennedy’s state director told the crowd that by Monday morning, the campaign will have already gathered more than one-third of the 12,000 signatures needed to make the state’s ballot, and Kennedy vowed that his campaign will have collected more than 20,000 signatures in the next two weeks.

Noting that self-identified Democrats and Republicans each make up roughly one-quarter of the country’s population, while independent voters swamp the two parties’ numbers, Kennedy asked, “In this country, don’t you think the American people should hear from the independent candidate?”

The crowd roared its approval.

Kennedy said that if he qualifies for enough state ballots by the middle of June, he’ll be one step closer to receiving an invitation to the first scheduled presidential debate under rules proposed by CNN, the debate’s sponsor. In order to qualify, Kennedy’s name will have to appear on ballots in enough states to win a majority of electoral votes, which he said he’s on track to do within a month.

Kennedy will also have to finish with at least 15% support in four recognized national public opinion polls, which he said he’s already done, though he’s recently been polling at around 10% in most national voter polls.

He said he’s already on the ballot in “seven or eight states right now,” while his campaign has collected enough signatures in seven more states. Kennedy plans to wait to turn those in until the last minute, however, because national Democrats and Republicans plan to “go through every signature and try to disqualify us, so we’re trying to narrow the window where they can do that.”

In Colorado, it takes 1,500 valid signatures from registered voters in each of the state’s eight congressional districts to qualify. Volunteers with clipboards scurried throughout the crowd on Sunday, asking attendees to sign their names as a contingent of notaries stayed busy at a nearby table. The campaign held simultaneous petition-drive launches in Grand Junction and Pueblo.

Instead of stoking division, Kennedy said, he intends to talk about what Americans agree on.

“Everybody agrees we want to take care of our environment,” he said. “If you want to divide Americans, just start talking about climate change, but if you want to bring them together, talk about clean water, clean air, protecting a habitat.”

According to Kennedy, the two major parties are focusing on what he called “mainly culture war issues” — abortion, guns, the border — in order to force Americans to “vote out of fear,” instead of voting for “somebody they like.”

“They’re all important issues, but here’re not the existential issues which are never talked about on a political landscape,” Kennedy said, citing the budget deficit and national debt as issues he plans to tackle.

Pointing to a recent internal poll that Kennedy said shows him beating both presumptive major party nominees in head-to-head contests — Biden by a wide margin and Trump “in a nail-biter” — Kennedy pushed back against arguments that his candidacy will only be a spoiler that could throw the election to either Biden or Trump.

“Everybody was saying I was a spoiler,” he said. “In this format, I cannot be the spoiler, because I can win the race.”

The DNC’s Matt Corridoni rejected Kennedy’s assertion.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a spoiler — recruited by the MAGA GOP and propped up by Trump’s largest donor,” Corridoni told Colorado Politics in a text message after the rally.

“His VEEP-like performance today does nothing to dispel that notion — it only reinforces how deeply unserious his campaign is.”

Colorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib said Kennedy wasn’t “a serious person” in an interview with Colorado Politics.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s just a puppet of MAGA donors who are hooping for another Trump term,” Murib said. “He might have an appeal among the same folks who helped swing the election to Trump in 2016. It’s our job to make sure voters understand that Joe Biden is a good president and has their interests in mind, and we can’t risk another term of Trump, which is exactly what RFK Jr. and his mega-donors are hoping to accomplish.”

Neither the Trump campaign nor Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams responded to requests for comment on Kennedy’s rally and candidacy in Colorado.

Before Kennedy took to the stage, unaffiliated Denver voter Alicia Nieva-Woodgate, a former Republican, told Colorado Politics that she was attending the rally to hear what Kennedy had to say.

“I’m so disillusioned with our system. I think the third party candidate today might be a valid thing,” she said. “I’m not a fan of either of the current candidates. I think that I would like to see someone, maybe Gen X, that has a true understanding of what the people in this country are going through. Is this the guy? I don’t know.”

After Kennedy spoke, Nieva-Woodgate said she hadn’t been impressed.

“It seems to me there was a lot of fear-mongering about what everybody else did wrong,” she said. “A lot of reliance on what happened with COVID, but COVID is over. We’ve got to look forward.”

She said she wanted concrete solutions but didn’t hear any from Kennedy.

“He talked a lot about I’m gonna change things, but he didn’t explain how. That’s why I came here. I wanted to hear how he was going to do things. I didn’t hear any of that at all,” she said. 

Added Nieva-Woodgate: “He said a lot of things that could bring a lot of hope, but had no explanation as to how he’s going to do it. So I really have no better understanding than I did when I came here.”