After years of stepping aside as a fleet of mostly male relatives rushed past in search of influence and glory, Caroline is beginning to exhibit her own Kennedyesque sense of ambition. She spent the last year playing a crucial role in Barack Obama's election campaign, as a prominent surrogate and top adviser, and has entered into provisional negotiations about filling the New York Senate seat soon to be vacated by Hillary Clinton, and once occupied by her uncle Robert. "She enjoyed a private life with her children and husband, and she zealously guarded her privacy until this year," said Ted Sorensen, a Kennedy White House adviser and family confidant who lobbied Caroline to endorse Obama last winter. "She's discovered, so to speak, a new world, and she enjoyed the experience." Her tentative approach of a high-profile legislative perch comes at a crossroads for the Kennedy dynasty: Her uncle Ted, the family's standard-bearer for four decades, is ailing, and the other Kennedys of her generation have proved unwilling or unable to carry the family's flag. One family loyalist who did successfully accede to the Senate suggested there was little Caroline Kennedy needed to learn about what a political career would entail. "It's not new being a senator in that family," said Harris Wofford, who worked as an aide in the Kennedy White House before being appointed to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate a generation later. "It's a great tradition. She certainly knows what she would be getting into."
Caroline Kennedy is beginning to exhibit her own Kennedyesque sense of ambition
Caroline Kennedy's new political turn
Clinton vacancy opens possibilities
Caption: Caroline Kennedy, shown in April, played a crucial role in Barack Obama's campaign. (Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press/File)
By Sasha Issenberg
Globe Staff /
December 10, 2008
WASHINGTON - For much of her adult life, Caroline Kennedy fulfilled only the most modest obligation of her political birthright, sitting on the board of the John F. Kennedy Library and presenting its Profile in Courage Award. And even that annual ritual must have reaffirmed her wariness of power: Most of the winners were politicians forced from public life for their noble but unpopular deeds.
Now, after years of stepping aside as a fleet of mostly male relatives rushed past in search of influence and glory, Caroline is beginning to exhibit her own Kennedyesque sense of ambition. She spent the last year playing a crucial role in Barack Obama's election campaign, as a prominent surrogate and top adviser, and has entered into provisional negotiations about filling the New York Senate seat soon to be vacated by Hillary Clinton, and once occupied by her uncle Robert.
"She enjoyed a private life with her children and husband, and she zealously guarded her privacy until this year," said Ted Sorensen, a Kennedy White House adviser and family confidant who lobbied Caroline to endorse Obama last winter. "She's discovered, so to speak, a new world, and she enjoyed the experience."
Her tentative approach of a high-profile legislative perch comes at a crossroads for the Kennedy dynasty: Her uncle Ted, the family's standard-bearer for four decades, is ailing, and the other Kennedys of her generation have proved unwilling or unable to carry the family's flag.
An aide to Senator Kennedy yesterday denied news reports that he had promoted Caroline to colleagues as a replacement for Clinton. One relative, however, openly championed her cause: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and activist who withdrew last week from contention, suggested Caroline Kennedy as an ideal substitute. Over the weekend, she reportedly contacted Governor David Paterson, who is responsible for filling the vacancy, to discuss the job without specifically declaring her interest in it. (Attempts to reach Caroline Kennedy for this report were unsuccessful.)
Until recently, even such an expression of curiosity in elective office would have been unimaginable for the 51-year-old, who long demonstrated more of her mother Jacqueline's elusiveness than her father's instinct toward politics. A trained attorney who does not practice law, Caroline Kennedy dabbled in legal scholarship and New York civic life while raising three children with her husband, Edwin Schlossberg.
Kennedy did not speak at a Democratic convention, whose dais has often served as a de-facto family reunion, until 2000, when she was ushered off stage to the theme from "Camelot." A year earlier, the death of her brother, John - who had a similarly uneasy relationship with public life until he launched and edited a political magazine - left Caroline Kennedy the lone survivor of the foursome that once inhabited the White House.
Since then, she has slowly drifted toward politics. In 2002, Kennedy took a $1-per-year job within the New York City Department of Education, raising money for a private charity that supported public schools. City officials were relying not only on her philanthropic and society ties - she is honorary chairwoman of American Ballet Theatre - but also her stature to rally support for an institution that often had trouble establishing credibility with wealthy donors.
"We discussed this when she took the role," said Joel I. Klein, the schools chancellor who hired Kennedy. "She knew she was going to be the public face of the public-private partnership."
Although she has been credited with helping to raise tens of millions of dollars for city schools - she quit her part-time job with the district after two years but remains co-chairwoman of the private charity - Kennedy surprised some in New York with her low profile, rarely giving interviews and appearing only fleetingly at public events.
In January, days before the critical Super Tuesday primaries, Kennedy for the first time endorsed a nonrelative for president, announcing her support for Obama in a New York Times op-ed that compared Obama to her father, who was assassinated in 1963. In it, Kennedy sought to affirm Obama's place in her family tradition even as a coterie of cousins made their own case for Clinton, his opponent.
"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she wrote. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."
The next day, she stood alongside her uncle Ted and his son Patrick, a Rhode Island congressman, at a Washington rally, but soon set out on her own campaign schedule on Obama's behalf. Despite her shy stage presence and occasionally halting delivery, the campaign counted on Kennedy to validate Obama's candidacy before a wide array of voters: She visited heavily Catholic, blue-collar Scranton, Pa., and stood along Oprah Winfrey at a Los Angeles rally targeting women voters.
Immediately after Obama secured the Democratic nomination, he brought Kennedy into his campaign's inner circle as a director of his vice presidential search team. The process she led, eventually selecting Delaware Senator Joe Biden, was celebrated by Democrats for its discretion and effectiveness. (Obama has selected Kennedy's search-team partner, lawyer Eric Holder, to be attorney general.)
"Caroline Kennedy has become one of my dearest friends, and is just a wonderful American, a wonderful person," Obama said Sunday on "Meet the Press," before declining to weigh in on her senatorial prospects for fear of getting "involved in New York politics."
Indeed, there are few places where a first-time candidate would find a rougher entry. Clinton's successor would have to defend the seat in two consecutive races - in a 2010 special election for the balance of Clinton's six-year term and then again to win a full term two years later - that could cost as much as $100 million. Already one popular Republican with a strong fund-raising record - moderate Long Island congressman Peter King - has declared his interest in challenging Paterson's appointee.
Sorensen, who ran for the same seat in 1970 after Robert Kennedy's assassination, said he has discussed with Caroline Kennedy the possibility of being in the Senate, although he would not divulge details of their conversation.
"My advice would be: 'Don't do what I did,' " said Sorensen, who entered the 1970 race as a national political celebrity with no experience as a candidate and lost in the Democratic primary. "I turned out to be a very poor fund-raiser, and you can't run in New York without any money."
One family loyalist who did successfully accede to the Senate suggested there was little Caroline Kennedy needed to learn about what a political career would entail.
"It's not new being a senator in that family," said Harris Wofford, who worked as an aide in the Kennedy White House before being appointed to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate a generation later. "It's a great tradition. She certainly knows what she would be getting into."
