Word: congressman
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Patrick was 26 the first time he was asked on television whether he would someday like to run for President, and he didn't hedge: "Yes." When he arrived in Washington as a freshman Congressman in 1995, the only question seemed to be when he would make his move for the Senate. Ted made no secret of his dream to see his son serve alongside...
...toward elected office, or a sense of divine right? Do they represent the last gasp of an old order, or the first breath of a new one? "I definitely would not be where I am today if it weren't for my family name and connections," says Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy, 34, who used that name and those connections to shatter fund-raising records last year as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I often joke that I'm the best example of why there should be campaign-finance reform...
That ol' Kennedy invincibility is getting noticeably shopworn--even in Massachusetts, where Kennedys have been on the ballot 20 times and never defeated. Not next year. Two prospective candidates and sons of R.F.K.--former Congressman Joe Kennedy II and his younger brother Max--backed away from what could have been brutal races. (Both declined to be interviewed for this article.) "It's not there for Joe and the others. There are too many problems," says a Kennedy friend. "And they're not prone to taking the kind of chances they would have at one time...
...respond," he told TIME. "One is steeped in self-appraisal and maturity, and one is kind of superficial and temporary. I'm responding; I'm not reacting." He left the campaign committee, shook up his staff and brought back trusted family political advisers. He became a different kind of Congressman--one who acknowledged some frailties that made him seem more human, less like a Kennedy fund-raising machine. Having gone public with the fact that he has sought therapy and taken medication to combat depression, he champions legislation to improve mental-health services. He took back his Appropriations Committee seat...
...least not until Joe Moakley, South Boston's beloved 15-term Congressman, announced last February that he was dying of leukemia. Max had bounced around the country from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, but in the carpetbagging Kennedy tradition, he suddenly bought a five-bedroom colonial in Moakley's blue-collar district. Patrick arranged for his cousin to have an audience with Moakley. Max tapped the Kennedy union connections, fund-raising network and advisers. Almost overnight, he became the presumed front runner in a potential field that included at least half a dozen seasoned pols...