Kennedy 'heirs' trail in Senate race

Published on Saturday 28 November 2009 19:11

THE Kennedy clan casts a long shadow over American politics – no more evident than in the current race for a seat in the US Senate.

Four Democrats are vying with each other to succeed the late Senator Edward M Kennedy but first they have to triumph in the primary on 8 December.

Three of those seeking a place on Capitol Hill have chosen to model themselves as the natural successor by emphasising connections with the Kennedy family.

Representative Michael E Capuano, the only candidate with Congressional experience, says his Washington seasoning makes him the obvious Kennedy heir. Electing someone who has not worked on Capitol Hill, Capuano said in a recent debate, "would be to say to Senator Kennedy, 'Your 47 years of experience weren't worth much.'"

Stephen G Pagliuca, a co-owner of the Boston Celtics basketball team, has said he decided to run because "Senator Kennedy would have wanted me to".

And Alan Khazei, co-founder of a national service programme, says the Kennedys were his role models. Khazei's latest advertisement opens with the "ask not what your country" passage from John F Kennedy's Inaugural Address.

But interestingly enough, playing the Kennedy card may not be a winning strategy after all. Virtually every poll has put Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general and the candidate least inclined to invoke Senator Edward Kennedy, far ahead of her three rivals.

Coakley was the first to declare her candidacy barely a week after Ted Kennedy's death in August.

Although she chose to make the announcement at the Omni Parker House hotel, where his older brother John F announced his candidacy for Congress, her haste drew some barbs from the Kennedy clan.

"She set up a committee six months before my uncle died," said Stephen E Smith Jnr, a son of Ted Kennedy's sister Jean. "There were people on the corner with a huge 'Coakley for Senate' sign two days after his funeral."

A liberal Democrat like her rivals, Coakley has nonetheless billed herself as "a different kind of leader", a phrase flashed in her campaign adverts.

Those ads have not mentioned Ted Kennedy, and yet she has outpolled her opponents and won the highest favourability ratings, which a poll last week put at 71 per cent. "Martha has cut her own image, and it's worked," said Dan Payne, a Democratic media consultant in Boston.

"She doesn't need to grab on to the Kennedy legacy, because she's the only one with statewide experience and exposure," he added.

In her biggest political risk to date, Coakley attacked the healthcare plan passed on 7 November by the House because of its restrictions on abortion coverage. Khazei and Pagliuca said they would support the bill regardless. And though Capuano ultimately sided with Coakley, he has not been as vocal about the issue.

While not criticising Coakley by name, Ted Kennedy's two sons, Edward Jnr and Patrick, said last week that their father would want the healthcare legislation to pass even if it included the House abortion restrictions. Ted Kennedy called healthcare reform "the cause of my life," and Democratic leaders in Washington often invoke his name when promoting it.

In The Globe's poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, 42 per cent of respondents said Coakley "would do the best job handling health care reform".

Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist in Boston, said that more than anything else, Coakley's lead was due to her high name recognition as attorney general. She was elected in 2006 after spending eight years in another high-profile job, as Middlesex County district attorney.

"In politics, people have to know and like you and believe and trust you before they vote for you," Marsh said.

At this point, Marsh and other strategists said the only hope for a Coakley rival to take the lead would be an endorsement from Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Ted Kennedy's widow, or Joseph P Kennedy II, his nephew and a popular former congressman from Massachusetts.

Earlier in the race, rumours flew that Joseph Kennedy would back Capuano, now in his sixth Congressional term, because he wanted Capuano's House seat freed up for one of his adult sons.

But with Coakley so far ahead in the polls, the strategists said, the Kennedys are unlikely to take a risk on backing anyone else.

Nearly four decades after Massachusetts last elected a Republican to the Senate, Marsh says that, whoever wins the Democrats' primary, the state will get a senator ideologically similar to Senator Ted Kennedy, and that this is what matters.

"Voters are smart enough to know they're not going to get another Ted Kennedy literally or figuratively," Marsh said, "but they're looking for someone who has his qualities."

In The Globe's poll, 40 per cent of respondents said it was "very important" for a candidate to share Kennedy's values, but 22 per cent said it was "not important at all."

"That doesn't mean someone who's always raising their hand and saying, 'I'm just like Ted,'" Marsh explained, "but someone who will be fighting to get people back to work, first and foremost, and to get them healthcare."