Not so sweet on Caroline

Kennedy given a less-than-regal welcome

Caroline Kennedy spoke with Save the Children worker Virginia Snead in New York yesterday. (STEPHEN CHERNIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

WASHINGTON - In less than two weeks as a politician, Caroline Kennedy has trekked across a state of 19 million to impress an audience of one: Governor David Paterson of New York, who will select a replacement for Senator Hillary Clinton after her

likely confirmation next month as secretary of state.

Yet the noblesse-oblige posture that benefited an earlier generation of Kennedys when they made their political debuts - including her father, John, and uncles Edward and Robert, who once held the Senate seat she seeks - has done little to charm the state's Democratic political establishment.

One US representative from Long Island, Democrat Gary Ackerman, has compared Kennedy to both Jennifer Lopez (for her fame) and Sarah Palin (for her refusal to engage the media directly). The governor she is trying to impress has bristled at the way Kennedy's famous profile looms over his decision-making.

"How is she a front-runner?" Paterson asked dismissively at a press conference earlier this week.

Some of Kennedy's cousins have faced similarly rough welcomes to electoral politics in recent years, as their efforts to win offices from Congress to governor have been stymied at various stages between conception and ballot box. The only member of the family to be elected to a new post in more than a decade is Bobby Shriver, who won a City Council seat in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2004.

"There is resistance, probably less so from the public than from some of the existing political groups in New York," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. "Even though she is a New Yorker, there is a little bit of the outside-the-political-circle treatment she's getting now."

Yesterday Kennedy gave her first media interviews after declaring early last week that she was interested in being appointed to fill Clinton's position in the Senate. After pursuing the job only tentatively - primarily through private meetings with local political leaders and answering policy questions only through a spokesman - Kennedy has retained a cadre of consultants and has begun to assume a more assertive posture.

"I was trying to respect the process," Kennedy told the Associated Press over a grilled-cheese sandwich with bacon at a Manhattan diner yesterday. "It is not a campaign."

The media and Democrats marshalling opposition to Kennedy have appeared unwilling to respect the distinction. The New York City tabloids are filled with daily reports that manage to find news items in the void of her public record, documenting how rarely she has voted, how invisible she was in a volunteer schools-district post, and how little she has contributed to other Democratic candidates.

"I came into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anybody else," Kennedy said in the AP interview. "I am an unconventional choice."

A Quinnipiac University Poll released this week showed that while nearly half of New Yorkers expect Paterson to select Kennedy, and voters prefer her to state attorney general Andrew Cuomo by a small margin, they are split over whether she has the proper qualifications for the job. Only 40 percent said Kennedy is ready to be a senator.

In addition, Kennedy's efforts are complicated by the factional divides in her party. She supported Barack Obama's presidential primary campaign while the state's Democratic officials sided almost unanimously with Clinton.

Kennedy is also seen as an ally of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican-turned-independent whose dominance of the city's center-left politics has vexed Democrats, but pleased some prominent political operatives who have also worked for Clinton and Kennedy. Cuomo, her most prominent rival for the Senate seat, is the son of a former governor and himself a potent political force.

"You have a lot of talented New Yorkers who also think they can serve well and you have a pretty sophisticated electorate in New York City and a very sophisticated governor," said Elizabeth Holtzman, a former US representative and two-time Senate candidate who has also told Paterson that she would like to be appointed. "It's a different kind of campaign than one would usually wage, and there's no road map."

Observers of the process said the peculiar circumstances under which Kennedy has decided to enter political life present her with a particular challenge.

She will have to demonstrate to New York Democrats that she has the political skills to defend the seat in two consecutive races - a 2010 special election and again in 2012 to earn a full term - but is being denied a full campaign now in which to demonstrate her mettle.

"For people who are working in politics, there's a sense that someone who wants a career needs to learn the process, show their effectiveness and commitment, do the work," said Chris McNickle, a former city official and author of "To Be Mayor of New York," a political history. "She has shown she is intelligent and capable, but she hasn't done the kind of things politicians are expected to do."

When Robert Kennedy, the US attorney general, decided he would seek election to the Senate in 1964, he was initially denied an endorsement from New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. because he failed to show proper deference, recalled McNickle.

"When he got interested in New York State, he had to conform to the local political power structure," McNickle said. "In a very similar way, Caroline had to conform to that, too."