With no heir to inherit the family’s crown, the death of Ted Kennedy may mark the final major chapter in the story of America’s most fabled political dynasty.
His son Patrick, a congressman from Rhode Island, would have to move to Massachusetts to run in the special election that must be held within 160 days to fill the Senate seat.
Yet he has little of the charisma of his father and has had addiction problems. In 2006 he sought help for dependency on prescription drugs after crashing his car into a barrier near the Capitol in Washington.
Robert Kennedy’s son, Joseph, a former six-term congressman from Massachusetts, will face calls to fill the seat but he has said recently that he enjoys his current job, running a charity that delivers cheap heating oil to the poor.
Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of John F. Kennedy, made a failed attempt to win Hillary Clinton’s former New York Senate seat last year, but her campaign turned into a fiasco. “There seems to be no one to pick up the torch,” said Thomas Whalen, a professor of politics at Boston University.
The political fortunes of another family member, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 58, eldest child of Robert Kennedy and a former Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland, foundered in 2002 when she failed to become governor. “There is no other person in the family among the younger sons who I think has the gravitas of a Ted Kennedy, in terms of identifying with a certain set of principles or having the same charisma,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of politics at Princeton University. “It does seem the family is fading as a dynasty.”
In addition, the race to fill the Massachusetts seat is mired in complications because of a legal quirk. Like nearly all US states, Massachusetts law used to allow the governor to appoint a successor to a vacant Senate seat.
That was changed by the Democratic-controlled state legislature in 2004 amid fears that Mitt Romney, who was then the Governor, would appoint a fellow Republican if John Kerry won the presidential election.
Deval Patrick, the state’s current Democratic Governor, said he would support a change in the law permitting the appointment of a temporary successor before the special election, but it is unclear whether it would succeed.
Without a temporary replacement, President Obama could lose his crucial 60th filibuster-proof vote in the Senate at a time when he needs to overcome Republican opposition to his healthcare reform plans.
