Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) Elected 1962, 7th term up 2006
Born:	Feb. 22, 1932, Boston
Home:	Hyannis Port
Education:	Harvard U., B.A. 1956, The Hague Intl. Law Schl., 1958, U. of VA, LL.B. 1959
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Vicki)
Military Career:	Army, 1951-53.
Professional Career:	Western states coord., John F. Kennedy Pres. Campaign, 1960; Asst. Dist. Atty., Suffolk Cnty., 1961-62.
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Edward Kennedy has served 40 years in the Senate--longer than all but four other senators in American history--and he is still going strong. He has had the highs and lows of his personal life followed by millions and criticized vitriolically by many. He has been a presidential candidate and, while still in his 30s, was widely assumed to be the next president. He is second in seniority in the Senate, behind Robert Byrd of West Virginia. His reputation as an idealistic champion of the poor has been burnished by the praise of first-rate celebrators that no American political family has attracted before, and the nation has watched him cope impressively time and again with family tragedy, most recently when his nephew John Kennedy Jr. died in July 1999. To others, he is a symbol of personal immorality and unpunished criminal behavior, a man who has gotten away with things that would have ended the public career of almost anyone else. There is some basis for both views, but neither is an entirely fair picture of this politician, who was re-elected without much fuss in 2000, after a term in which he did much to set national policy even while Republicans controlled the Congress.

The luster of the Kennedys has worn off, in America and even in Massachusetts, and the percentage of Americans who look to the Kennedys for political leadership has grown small. Most voters can't remember, or never knew, what made the Kennedys so exciting. There was little in the early life of this youngest of the Kennedy siblings to suggest he would be a major politician, much less for so long. He grew up in Bronxville, New York, a rich suburb with many other rich Catholics, was thrown out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish exam and served in the Army, returned to earn degrees at Harvard and Virginia Law School, and married a Bronxville girl who never developed a taste for politics. Then his brother was elected president of the United States at 43, and the 28-year-old Edward Kennedy was a national celebrity. His father insisted that he run for the Senate; a JFK college roommate was found to hold the seat until he reached the constitutional age of 30, in 1962. His family money and the enthusiasm among Massachusetts Catholics for this seeming royalty enabled him to beat strong candidates with good political names: Attorney General Edward McCormack, nephew of Speaker John McCormack, in the Democratic primary; George Cabot Lodge, son and great-grandson of senators, in the general. ''He can do more for Massachusetts'' was his slogan, as it had been John F. Kennedy's in his first Senate race 10 years before.

After his brothers' assassinations, Edward Kennedy was seen by many as their natural heir, and he could have been nominated for president in 1968, at 36, or in 1972, had he chosen to run. Instead, in the latter year, he gave the first of several stirring convention speeches promoting his trademark liberalism. In 1979, he did run for president, and began the race against incumbent Jimmy Carter far ahead in the polls. But he was unable to articulate his reasons for running, and his candidacy was greeted with adverse reaction to him personally as well as to his policies. It ended in a crushing defeat, relieved only by another stirring convention speech, after which he pointedly refused to raise Carter's hand on the podium. In retrospect, it is plain that Edward Kennedy's presidential chances were ended in July 1969, with the accident at Chappaquiddick. But he has been re-elected with solid margins in Massachusetts, though he received spirited competition in 1994 from Mitt Romney, then a venture capitalist and now governor.

Kennedy has been a hardworking and practical politician who, after his brothers' deaths, took up liberal causes and attention to the poor, which had been the focus of Robert Kennedy in the last years of his life. He has worked hard for a quarter century on their behalf without the friendship of a Democratic administration, until the election of Bill Clinton, and since 1994, for much of the time, without the backing of a Democratic majority. As chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee from 1987-94, Kennedy supported teachers' unions; on the Judiciary Committee, which he chaired back in 1979-80 (his chief aide was a young lawyer named Stephen Breyer, now on the U.S. Supreme Court), he supported abortion rights and feminist groups with energy and enthusiasm. He immediately pounced on Judge Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, but played a lesser role in the Clarence Thomas hearings, which came shortly after an incident when his nephew William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with rape in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 1992, Kennedy supported Bill Clinton happily and basked as Clinton gave repeated homage to the Kennedy family. Legislatively, Kennedy was productive, though not as much as he wished. He worked to pass direct student loans, AmeriCorps, Goals 2000 and the School-to-Work Opportunity Act. He again sponsored the Family and Medical Leave Act which George Bush had vetoed; it was the first law Bill Clinton signed. But he was frustrated on other issues. He sought to prevent states from regulating abortions and to ban the death penalty when imposed disproportionately on criminals of different races; both efforts failed. On health care, a longtime Kennedy cause, he backed a Canadian-style single-payer system. In May 1994, he got a health care bill resembling Clinton's through his committee, but that was as far as it went.

After the hard-fought 1994 election, Kennedy returned to a Republican Senate and shifted his focus from expanding government to protecting it from downsizing. In 1996, he went on the offensive. He pushed the Kassebaum-Kennedy health care bill, an incremental measure to provide portability of health insurance and to limit exclusions for pre-existing conditions; he worked to keep Medical Savings Accounts out, and the bill passed.

Kennedy has continued to be active on health issues, opposing Republican measures and sponsoring some bipartisan initiatives of his own. He supported the Dingell-Norwood bill regulating HMOs and called the Republican version of HMO regulation "a minimalist bill that only the insurance industry could love." Kennedy has continued to press for increases in the minimum wage and in Pell grants. He was a floor manager for the 1965 immigration law, which opened the doors to millions of immigrants, and in 2000, pressed for amnesty for illegal aliens in the United States since 1986 and for giving Central American and Haitian refugees the same refugee status as Cubans.

Kennedy did not quit legislating even when George W. Bush took office with a Republican Senate. Kennedy goes back a long time with the Bushes. Elected to fill his brother's unexpired term in November 1962, he was technically a colleague of George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush, whose last term ended in January 1963. George W. Bush invited Kennedy to the White House three days after his inauguration to talk about education and twice on February 1, to talk about disabilities legislation and to view Thirteen Days, the film about the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy played a major role in producing Bush's first major bipartisan achievement, the education bill passed by the Senate in June 2001 and the conference committee reached agreement in December 2001. It did not include Bush's vouchers for private schools which Republicans wanted (it did include private after-school tutoring) but it did include a pilot program to allow some districts to spend money with virtually no federal conditions which Democrats disliked; its core was requiring annual testing of students and requiring schools to show improvement over the years or face state takeover. But Kennedy kept pressing Bush for more education money, especially for special education.

On several other issues, Kennedy also showed great adeptness at bipartisan legislating. As Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, he and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback in October 2001 wrote a bill to establish automated exit and entry systems at airports, ports and border crossings, develop biometric identifiers and require special scrutiny of student visa applicants from terrorism-sponsoring countries; it passed the Senate in April 2002. In November 2001, he and Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist introduced a bill to strengthen defenses against germ warfare; after negotiations with the House, it became law in May 2002. In February 2001, Kennedy joined with Senators John Edwards and John McCain to sponsor a bill similar to the Dingell-Norwood bill on HMO regulation; a version passed the Senate in June 2001. He co-sponsored with North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms a bill to pay for colon cancer screening. He was a co-sponsor of the Senate Democrats' prescription drugs bill in 2002. But on other issues Kennedy held strongly to the liberal position. He opposed the Iraq war resolution in October 2002, saying, "There are realistic alternatives between doing nothing and declaring unilateral or immediate war."

Even his partisan opponents admit that Kennedy has proved to be a superlative legislator, and one as active and energetic in his 70s as he was two or three decades before. Certainly his constituents in Massachusetts have long since reached that conclusion. There used to be speculation that Kennedy might step down, for one of the younger members of his family; that seems unlikely now. After his victory over Mitt Romney in 1994, no serious Republican wanted to run against him in 2000. His opponent was one Jack E. Robinson, who claimed to be a successful entrepreneur and who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. Governor Paul Cellucci made it clear he would not support Robinson, and his petitions were rejected by the secretary of state for insufficient signatures. The Supreme Judicial Court put him on the ballot in July 2000; his hapless candidacy went nowhere. Kennedy won with 73% of the vote, to 13% for Robinson and 12% for Libertarian Carla Howell. There seems little doubt that Kennedy will run again. He has served with all of the other four senators who served more than 40 years--Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd, Carl Hayden and John Stennis--and he seems ready to stay longer than any of them. There seems little doubt that he can be reelected in 2006, when he will be 74, and if he serves out that term, he will have served 50 years in the Senate, more than anyone else in history, assuming that Robert Byrd does not reach that milepost before him.

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DC Office
315 RSOB 20510, 202-224-4543; Fax: 202-224-2417; Web site: kennedy.senate.gov

State Offices
Boston, 617-565-3170.

Committees

• Armed Services: Emerging Threats & Capabilities; Personnel; Seapower (RMM).
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (RMM): Aging; Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services (RMM).
• Judiciary: Constitution, Civil Rights & Property Rights; Immigration, Border Security & Citizenship (RMM); Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security.
• Joint Economic Committee (8th of 10 Sens.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	100	60	100	82	63	38	13	29	0	0	--
2001	100	--	100	88	--	--	9	38	4	--	0

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	88%	--	9%		85%	--	13%
Social	81%	--	8%		82%	--	0%
Foreign	87%	--	3%		89%	--	10%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 2. Expand Patients' Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Permit ANWR Development N 5. Confirm Ashcroft as AG N 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. $ for Hate Crime Prosecution Y  8. Overseas Military Abortions Y  9. Bar Coop. with Intl. Court N 10. Trade Promotion Authority N 11. Authorize Force in Iraq N 12. Homeland Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Edward Kennedy (D)	1,889,494	73%	$3,662,652
	Jack E. Robinson III (R)	334,341	13%	$150,430
	Carla A. Howell (Lib)	308,860	12%	$1,055,186
	Other	66,725	3%
2000 primary	Edward Kennedy (D)	unopposed
1994 general	Edward Kennedy (D)	1,265,997	58%	$11,493,735
	Mitt Romney (R)	894,000	41%	$7,624,491
Prior winning percentages: 1988 (65%); 1982 (61%); 1976 (69%); 1970 (62%); 1964 (74%); 1962 (55%)