Without Kennedy, big shoes would have to be filled
At some point yesterday, many in Massachusetts paused to imagine what life would be like without Ted Kennedy.
In the state's robust Democratic political culture, where Kennedy has attained almost mythic stature, there were wishes for a full recovery from an apparent seizure. But there were also reflections on what Edward Moore Kennedy's 45-plus years in the United States Senate have meant to the Bay State, and to all the institutions and programs that benefited from his ability to deliver the goods on Capitol Hill.
It was a moment to realize that some day, his big shoes will have to be filled - later rather than sooner, they hoped.
"He's one of the giants," said Michael S. Dukakis, a former three-term governor, who, like Kennedy before him and Senator John F. Kerry after him, lost campaigns for president. "If you needed something, wanted to produce something, you called him and, bang, you got it, and he never asked for anything in return."
"Ted Kennedy is the go-to guy on everything," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston. "You name it: education, housing, a photonics lab at Boston University, the merger of City Hospital and University Hospital, he even recommended Tom Payzant, who became superintendent of schools in Boston for 10 1/2 years."
While a regular punching bag for conservatives and constant fodder for talk radio hosts, Kennedy has been a champion for teaching hospitals, medical and university research projects, defense contracts, high-tech research, the state's military bases, community health centers, arts programs, day care, and anything else that would help the state's older cities. In 2006, he worked behind the scenes with state Democratic leaders to help win passage of Massachusetts's groundbreaking universal healthcare legislation. Some Democrats resented it because Kennedy's helped give Republican Mitt Romney a signature issue that he would use during his unsuccessful run for president. Kennedy brushed it off, saying the issue was more important than the politics.
"There isn't anyone you can compare him to," said Philip Johnston, former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and a Kennedy family loyalist for more than 40 years. "He is the one indispensable person in the state."
Not only in Massachusetts and Washington, but across the country, there exists an army of former staff members and campaign operatives who have worked for Kennedy. They are among the best in the business and for many, a bond endures over the decades.
Some, like attorney Gerard Doherty of Charlestown, trace their relationship with the Kennedys back to John F. Kennedy's first campaign for Congress in 1946. The allegiance transferred automatically to the later campaigns of his brothers, Edward Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.
Doherty believes Edward Kennedy's crusade for universal healthcare dates back to 1964, when he spent months immobilized in a frame at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton after breaking his back in a small plane crash. They would talk for hours about treatments and how healthcare could be made more affordable, Doherty recalled.
To this day, Kennedy takes on unpublicizied missions to help individuals in need of specialized treatment, Doherty said.
"People will scratch their head and say 'Why is he working so hard for Happy Harry Smith and his individual problem when he could be coasting?' " Doherty said. "Coasting is alien to him."
Of the Kennedy work ethic, Johnston said: "Partly it's genetic and partly it's a commitment to the values of his brothers, carrying on their unfinished work of helping poor people and fighting for human rights. That's what gets him up every morning."
There's an operatic quality to the story of Edward Kennedy and his journey from kid brother of a popular president to a hall-of-fame caliber career in the Senate. When he ran to fill the Senate seat of his brother JFK in 1962, his qualifications were mocked at a debate by his Democratic primary rival, Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state attorney general and nephew of John W. McCormack, speaker of the US House of Representatives. Kennedy went on to crush McCormack in the clash of dynasties.
There was the death of Mary Jo Kopechne in a car accident Kennedy fled the scene of on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, a scandal that some would never forgive. Others begrudged his ill-fated challenge in 1980 of Jimmy Carter, a sitting president in his own party. Two years later he and his first wife, Joan, divorced, and Kennedy's lifestyle later became the subject of tabloid gossip.
Through it all, though, he continued his work in the Senate.
In the heat of his own presidential campaign, John McCain called Kennedy "a legendary lawmaker" and said, "I consider it a great privilege to call him my friend." 