Ted Kennedy, Jr. Launches Political Career

Saying he was proud of his family’s legacy of ​“standing up for working families, for social justice , for political and economic fairness,” Ted Kennedy, Jr. last night announced he would continue their work by seeking to become a state senator. 

Kennedy, 52, said over the next several months he intends to ​“hold a conversation” with the voters of the six towns that form the 12th State Senate District in order to hear their views and needs. He said he wants to listen and to learn even as he outlined a number of ideas to take to Hartford. He told the audience he would legislate by consensus, a belief his father, the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, believed in.

More than 200 people filled the grand auditorium of the Blackstone Memorial Library, where it was standing room only for the long-awaited announcement from the Connecticut heir to the Kennedy dynasty. At 6:30 p.m. he formally announced his candidacy. The crowd stood, applauding and shouting and whistling loudly as a new Kennedy emerged on Connecticut’s political stage.

Actually his intent to seek public office came earlier in the day, at about 2:15 p.m. when he officially filed his candidate’s papers with the State Elections Enforcement Commission in Hartford. He also announced he will seek public campaign financing.

It has been a long time coming. Gina MacDonald-Page, an old friend from Stony Creek, has urged him for years to run for public office, she told the Eagle after the event. Throughout the evening, she stood at the back of the room holding a white sign. It said, simply, ​“Finally!!!” 

Kennedy told the crowd: ​“This really feels like a natural continuation of my life’s work, my life’s goals. From an early age I learned that every person should make a contribution to their community and I believe that public service is an important part of our civic duty. I believe everyone should try to give back in their own way.” He described Branford as a wonderful town, a place he and his family love and the natural place for him to represent.

“This is my home. I love Branford. I love the shoreline. I love living in a small state. I feel very connected to people here. these are where my friends are. I really believe that state government is a lab or experimentation as I look at the issues undertaken at the state level. There are really interesting issues. I believe it is a place where I am going to be able to have an impact and that is what I am most interested in.”
 
Afterwards he told reporters that it was ​“an incredible feeling to walk into a room like this and to feel the energy and the support of so many people. It is very exhilarating.”

The room was packed with press. Local and regional television reporters were on hand, including New England Cable News (NECN,) whose feed extends to Boston, where the presidential library of his uncle John F. Kennedy is located and where his extended family lived for generations.

State Sen. Ed Meyer, who recently announced his upcoming retirement and encouraged Kennedy to run for his seat, noted the historic nature of the event as he introduced Kennedy. 

“We meet in this very hallowed room at the Blackstone library in Branford, Connecticut, and we meet to launch a new career in elective politics. We launch a member of an historic and fabled family. We launch the nephew of a great president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and a nephew of a fighting, battling attorney general Robert, with whom I was able to work.” Meyer spoke of former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D‑R.I.), Kennedy’s brother, and of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, Ted’s father. The audience, filled with many democrats eager for a new leader, rose, applauding as Meyer introduced Kennedy as ​“the next state senator of the 12th District.”

Disability Issues Discussed

Having spent his working life in the area of disability advocacy and law, Kennedy said he would work to make advances in this area as senator. He noted there are 13,000 people in the district who have some form of disability. Seated near Kennedy on stage was Marc Gallucci, the executive director of the Center for Disability Rights, a longtime colleague and friend. He spoke of their relationship.

“Advancing disability rights in D.C and in Connecticut, we need Democrats and Republicans who are able to build bridges and find common ground. Consensus building is the essential skill of a legislator. And although I have my own ideas about the improvements and changes we would like to see, my job is to listen carefully to you in the towns of Branford, Guilford, Madison, North Branford, Killingworth and Durham. In the next several weeks I plan to speak to businesses, to knock on doors, to speak to community groups,” he said.

Long involved in environmental issues, he spoke of his wife Kiki who played a major role in stopping various companies from setting up pipelines in Long Island Sound. ​“Many of you in this room got to know my wife Kiki over the last ten years where we had multiple occasions where major energy companies, some of the largest companies in the world, have tried to come into our town, appropriating our natural resources for their own short term profit at the expense of our long term prosperity. Like so many people in this room said, no, Long Island Sound is not for sale.” 

A Life-Changing Event

He was both philosophical and personal as he described a life-changing event that would form his personality and his commitment to the disabled. 

It happened when he was 12 years old. His father came to his hospital bed to tell him that he would lose his leg to bone cancer the next day. 

“At the time and the months afterwards, I thought that my life was over… I remember people gawking at me because I had no hair because of chemotherapy and it made me feel like I was some sort of deformed freak. It was a combination of these experiences and so many interactions I had with other people in the same situation that sensitized me to the need and struggles of other families in similar situations.

He spoke of meeting a boy his ages who was on crutches. ​“He had lost his leg just like me. Why don’t you wear an artificial leg, I asked, and I thought it may be painful because it can be painful to wear. He said ​‘I would love to wear an artificial leg but my parents can’t afford one.’ I remember that moment very, very clearly. I was angry and upset by that and of course so grateful and appreciative for my own good fortune. And that day I said I want to make something of myself and do something with my life so that this same situation doesn’t happen to other families.” 

Looking Toward Hartford

He observed what he termed a ​“perverse policy” that permits the state to pay $80,000 a year to keep someone living in a nursing home while at the same time refusing to pay $20,000 a year to keep a person in his or her own home. ​“It is the kind of policy that is perverse, it is not good for people and it is not the kind of fiscal discipline that we need in our government today.” 

He said he can make a meaningful impact in the state senate by promoting and attracting innovative businesses to the area, a policy that state Rep. Lonnie Reed (pictured) has advocated. Reed served as master of ceremonies for the event and described Kennedy ​“as very much his own man.”

He would also like to see a new railway infrastructure that would streamline service to New York.

He said it took less time a hundred years ago ​“than it does today to get from New Haven to New York. And I know what a one hour train ride from New Haven to Manhattan would mean,” he said referring to his commuter days to the Big Apple. There were moments of hilarity throughout Kennedy’s talk that his family responded to. 

He recently became a partner in a Connecticut law firm, a position he told reporters afterward that would enable him to serve the state part-time should he become a state senator.

His approach to drawing bills and tackling difficult subjects would be ​“to work together as a team. To compete against the world, to compete against the rest of the country we can’t be fighting among ourselves. We can’t… I have the ability to listen and to keep an open mind. I want to bring a common sense and cooperative tone to government. I strongly identify with my father’s philosophy as consensus builder and engaging in bi-partisanship. That is what I have done all my life.”

At the end of his talk, he announced his intention to participate ​“in the state’s clean elections law.” This means he has to raise $15,000 via donations whose cap is set at $100 per person. Once he reaches this goal, the state will provide $85,000 for his campaign. 

Kennedy has drawn his immediate team from Branford. Fran Walsh, a longtime selectman during the Unk DaRos administration and the former principal of the Walsh Intermediate School, will serve as his treasurer. Yve Larrieu, who served as treasurer for Sen. Meyer during his campaigns, is deputy treasurer. She showed the Eagle the newly printed ​“Friends of Ted Kennedy Jr.” contribution forms, all printed up and ready to go. John Murphy, who led successful campaigns for former first selectman Unk DaRos, will serve as Kennedy’s campaign manager. 
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