Kennedy legacy is on the line in Mass.
Joseph Kennedy III seeks election to U.S. Senate
News Analysis
By STEVEN A COHEN
Massachusetts and the nation could use another Kennedy in the Senate – one who will carry on a tradition that’s in stark contrast to the Kennedy currently serving there.
U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, D.-Mass., ruffled feathers at home by declaring for the Senate seat held by Democratic Sen. Edward Markey. Kennedy will turn 40 in October. Markey, 74, represented Massachusetts’s 7th Congressional District from 1976 to 2013, when he won a special election to the Senate. He began his political career in the Massachusetts House in 1973.
Kennedy would have immediate clout as a senator in Washington. He is the grandson of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the grand nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who served in the Senate from 1962 until his death in 2009. Sen. Kennedy’s voice and influence in behalf of the many millions of Americans without influence is needed today.
The other Kennedy currently serving in the Senate is also named John Kennedy, a Democrat turned Republican from Louisiana, who promised to join President Trump in “draining the swamp” in Washington when he and Trump ran for election in 2016. He, along with all but one Republican, voted against convicting Trump at his impeachment trial last December.
Joseph Kennedy was the clear favorite when he ran for the House seat held by retiring Rep. Barney Frank in 2012. He won the primary with nearly 90 percent of the vote and defeated his Republican opponent in the November election with more than 60 percent. He was reelected handily in every election since and was unopposed in 2018. He was chosen by the House leadership to deliver the Democratic response to Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address, and he spoke of:
“A government that struggles to keep itself open. Russia knee-deep in our democracy. An all-out war on environmental protection. A Justice Department rolling back civil rights by the day. Hatred and supremacy proudly marching in our streets. Bullets tearing through our classrooms, concerts and congregations, targeting out safest, sacred places.”
The Kennedy- Markey contest in the September 1 Massachusetts primary is a toss-up, although some recent polls have put Markey ahead. If he wins, the six-year term will make him 80 by the next time the seat comes up for election again.
Kennedy hasn’t simply relied on his family to position himself where he is today. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and was an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts before his election to Congress. He is fluent in Spanish and served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, where he designed and implemented an economic development project.
Markey also is a progressive who has focused on climate change in the House and the Senate. He holds a law degree from Boston College. He began his service in the U.S. House nearly four years before Joseph Kennedy III was born. He was reelected to the House 19 times before winning the Senate seat vacated by John F. Kerry, who was appointed secretary of state by President Obama, in a special election in June 2013. He won reelection in 2014.
The question before Massachusetts voters is:
Would the state and the nation be better served by one of many aging senators whose name is not widely known outside his home state, or by an ambitious young man with a family legacy that is known worldwide? No one knows the path to the future, but it surely doesn’t lie with the old men in the Senate.
