Can "Daddy's Team" Be Beaten?

By Amy Wilentz

In an old photograph, the gentle hill rolls down from the sprawling house to the spot under the broad tree where the family, numbering ten at the time, is strolling hand in hand. First comes Robert F. Kennedy, then his wife Ethel, then Daughter Kathleen, Son Joe and, in descending order, the rest of the brood. In the picture, the father looks as if he is pulling them all after him, up the next hill.

A few years after that photograph was taken, Senator Kennedy, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated in Los Angeles. Young as they were, both Kathleen, then 16, and Joe, 15, were old enough in 1968 to understand what had happened and to retain the impression that "Daddy," as they still call their father, had made upon them. "You have a special and particular responsibility now, which I know you will fulfill," Robert Kennedy wrote to Joe on the day his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was buried in 1963. "Be kind to others who are less fortunate than we -- and love our country." Kathleen received a similar note. When Joseph P. Kennedy II was asked recently by Interview magazine what the downside of the Kennedy legacy was, the reply came quickly: "Not living up to it."

Robert Kennedy's children have been dogged by tragedy over the years, including the 1984 drug-overdose death of David Kennedy, then 28. But rather than dwelling on the dark side of the Kennedy myth, his eldest children are striving to live up to the responsibilities their father taught them. The first members of the third generation of Kennedys to seek political office, the brother and sister both face congressional primaries early this month, a rite of passage that, for the Kennedys, is the equivalent of confirmation or graduation in other families. Joe, 33, is running in Massachusetts' historic Eighth District, a liberal Democratic stronghold in Boston and Cambridge, and an area J.F.K. represented before moving on to the Senate in 1952, the year Joe was born. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 35, the first Kennedy woman to seek office, is running for Congress in a less familiar place, Maryland's Second District, north of Baltimore. She has lived there for two years with her husband David, a teacher at St. John's College in Annapolis.

The biggest issue in both campaigns has been the Kennedy name. After Joe announced his candidacy, a field of 13 turned into a field of nine. Kennedy's name recognition in his home state looked unbeatable. When asked whether he would have any problems fund raising, Kennedy replied, "If you have 30 cousins, it's pretty easy." If Kennedy wins the primary, the seat is virtually his; the district is 60% Democratic. But his victory is not a foregone conclusion. A recent independent poll showed liberal State Senator George Bachrach closing on him with 32% to Kennedy's 38%.

Townsend faces even harder going. Although she is favored to win the primary, she must then upset Incumbent Representative Helen Delich Bentley, 62, a tough-talking conservative who dismisses Townsend's candidacy the way a dowager would dismiss a flapper. "I am running on my own name," says Bentley, "and on what I have done."

Townsend seems uncertain about how much to rely on her famous name. "People are electing Kathleen Townsend," she says. Then she corrects herself. "They are electing Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I don't intend to hide the fact that I'm a Kennedy." While her posters promote her as Kathleen Townsend, her literature uses all three names. Townsend has been accused of carpetbagging, even though her husband grew up in the district and teaches nearby. When Republicans complain that she is a newcomer, she replies with a humor and bite characteristic of her late father, "The Republicans, of all people, should be pleased that a wife has followed her husband to Maryland."

While their opponents grumble about the Kennedy name and the attendant media fuss, both Joe and Kathleen are trying to wage issue-oriented campaigns. Though his broad smile and raw physical presence recall his father's energy and charisma, Joe Kennedy's politics are not quite Robert Kennedy's. After completing an academic career that included stints at three colleges (he finally graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston), Kennedy founded a nonprofit corporation called Citizens Energy Corp., which provides inexpensive heating fuel and prescription drugs to low-income families. Citing his company's solid success in almost every speech, Kennedy mixes '60s liberalism with '80s pragmatism. His message is one of populist entrepreneurship, but Bachrach told the New York Times that Kennedy is the "candidate of the right in this race," fighting words in a district that went overwhelmingly for Walter Mondale.

Townsend is more clearly her father's philosophical heir, and she matches him in seriousness. A Harvard graduate and a lawyer, she has worked for the Massachusetts and Maryland attorney generals. Like her father, she chops the air with her palm when she speaks, and she talks compassionately of the dispossessed and disenfranchised. It remains to be seen whether she can move a district that is predominantly Democratic but moderate.

"Every morning," Townsend says of her childhood, "each child was required to recite three current events, and on Sundays the older children were expected to make a speech about a personality in the news." Now the eldest children of Robert Kennedy are hoping to bring that ingrained interest in public matters to Washington. The upcoming primaries will be a test of their old family football cheer: "Clap your hands! Stamp your feet! 'Cause Daddy's team can't be beat."

With reporting by Jenny Abdo/Baltimore and Joelle Attinger/Boston