Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won’t appear on Maine’s presidential ballot after pledging last week that he would withdraw from the race in states where he might be a spoiler.

Kennedy announced Friday that he is suspending his independent campaign for president and endorsing Republican Donald Trump.

He said he would remain on ballots in most of the states in which he qualified but would withdraw in battlegrounds where he felt his presence would affect the outcome.

“I want everyone to know that I am only suspending my campaign, not terminating it,” Kennedy said in a speech Friday in Phoenix. “My name will still be on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President (Kamala) Harris. In red states – the same applies.”

“But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I will remove my name and urge voters not to vote for me,” he added.

A spokesperson for the Maine Department of the Secretary of State confirmed Tuesday that Kennedy filed a notice to withdraw from the ballot ahead of a 5 p.m. deadline for candidates to do so, and that he will not be on the ballot in November.

A spokesperson for Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to questions about which other state ballots Kennedy will withdraw from, and whether the campaign’s withdrawal in Maine reflects any specific consideration of whether Maine’s 2nd Congressional District constitutes a battleground area.

The 1st Congressional District, which includes Maine’s southern and coastal areas, voted Democratic in the last two presidential elections, while Trump successfully secured one of the state’s four electoral votes in both 2016 and 2020 after winning in the more rural 2nd District.

A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released last week showed Harris, a Democrat, with a 55% to 38% lead over Trump statewide. In the 1st District, Harris led Trump 62% to 33%, but the race was much tighter in the 2nd District, where the poll found Harris ahead of Trump by just 5 percentage points and Kennedy polling at 2%.

Kennedy was in Maine as recently as this week, when he posted on the social media site X that he was here visiting and would be doing an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who has a home and studio in Bryant Pond.

I’m back in Maine eating lobster, reflecting on sailing trips with my family, and whitewater paddling with my brothers. pic.twitter.com/d6aLPym55f

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 26, 2024

“I love being here,” Kennedy said in the video posted Monday. “I love Maine. I spent a lot of my childhood in this state. My brothers and I ran a whitewater outfitting company up on the Kennebec River, and we did all the big whitewater rivers in Maine. … I just love being up here.”

The other presidential candidates appearing on the ballot in Maine along with Trump and Harris are Libertarian Chase Oliver, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Cornel West, who is unenrolled in Maine but filed as part of the Justice for All party.

The race will be decided using ranked choice voting, which allows for an instant runoff should no candidate get 50% of the votes in the first round.

Kennedy’s withdrawal is just the latest wrinkle in the complicated process of finalizing Maine’s presidential ballot. In December, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump would be barred from the Republican primary following a voter challenge alleging he incited an insurrection in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

That case dragged on for months as the appeals process played out, and Bellows finally reversed her decision just before the March primary, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump should remain on the ballot in a similar case in Colorado.

There were also challenges filed to keep Kennedy and West off the November ballot.

West’s candidacy was challenged by three Maine voters – Nathan Berger of Portland, Anne Gass of Gray and Sandra Marquis of Lewiston – who argued that West should not appear on the ballot for a variety of reasons, including submitting too many signatures in violation of state law.

Bellows said in a decision last week that some signatures for West were gathered fraudulently and were discarded, but it was not enough to disqualify him from the ballot as an independent candidate.

Emily Cook, spokesperson for the Maine secretary of state’s office, said the deadline to appeal that decision was Tuesday, and the office had not been notified of any appeal by the close of the business day.

James Stretch of Topsham filed a separate challenge to Kennedy being on the ballot but abruptly dropped the complaint without providing a reason a few days before the secretary of state’s office was scheduled to hold a hearing on the matter.