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Kennedy embarks on upstate ‘listening tour’Senate candidate reveals little about her priorities, politics
BY BEN DOBBIN AND DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press

Associated Press writers Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo and William Kates in Syracuse contributed to this report.

    ROCHESTER — The start of Caroline Kennedy’s listening tour was awfully hard to hear.
    So far, her first foray into politics has been one of private meetings, brief appearances and unanswered questions about what she would do, say and think if chosen as New York’s next senator.
    It’s a similar strategy to the one Hillary Rodham Clinton employed so successfully in 1999 but with a big difference: Kennedy’s really campaigning for just one voter — Democratic Gov. David Paterson, who has the sole responsibility for naming a successor if Clinton is confirmed as President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state.
    “It is not a campaign,” Kennedy said after a private meeting in Rochester with Democratic officials.
    Yet there is an intense lobbying effort under way to convince the people who can convince the governor to make her a senator.
    In that, Kennedy is no different than the dozen or so other Senate hopefuls — but Kennedy’s effort has been far more closely scrutinized because she has never run for offi ce and little is known about her politics, personality or priorities.
    A big part of Kennedy’s effort is trying to convince upstate political bosses that she sees beyond the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
    Collectively, upstate New Yorkers feel chronically ignored by New York’s political leadership, especially now that the governor and both senators live in or near New York City.
    The region that sprawls from New York’s suburbs to the Canadian border and west to Lake Erie has been in the economic doldrums for years, long before seven-figure stockbrokers started sweating from the financial meltdown.
    Into that unsettled environment stepped Kennedy last week, hoping to prove she has what it takes to be the state’s next senator.
    Should Clinton win confirmation early next year, Paterson will appoint someone to the seat for two years. Under state law, the new senator will have to run for re-election in 2010, and if successful, again in 2012.
    Kennedy stumbled in her first public appearance Wednesday in Syracuse. She met privately for an hour with local politicians, then spoke to reporters for all of 30 seconds before being hustled away by an aide.
    Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll said she “seemed pleasant” and added, “I think she’s certainly well-read.”
    Former federal prosecutor Dan French, who picked up Kennedy at the airport, said she would return to Syracuse to talk more.
    “People need to let her jump into this,” French said. “She’s doing everything she can to meet people and hear from people, and she’s just begun.”
    When she reached Buffalo later in the day, she opened up enough to speak publicly for about two minutes. But she was surrounded to and from her car by security and media so it’s doubtful the public caught even a glimpse of her.
    The trip did not get good reviews.
    “A drive-by visit,” the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle called it, urging her to come back and talk publicly to real people, not politicians.
    By comparison, when Clinton came through Buffalo during one stop on her listening tour in August 1999, she dropped in on labor leaders, business leaders, ministers, family picnics and house parties. It was part of a long, concerted effort to showcase Clinton all over the state. The then-first lady had an advantage Kennedy doesn’t: Time. When Clinton visited Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s farm to formally introduce herself to New York voters, it was in mid-1999, more than a year before the actual election. Kennedy has until January, or February at the latest, before Paterson makes his decision.
    Kennedy’s public outreach so far may be scant, but her private talks have already paid dividends. Kevin Sheekey — the man behind Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s stillborn presidential campaign — has been promoting her privately, according to Democrats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations are private.
    The backroom lobbying also centers around political operative Josh Isay. Isay is a former top aide to Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer whose clients include Kennedy, Bloomberg and civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who effectively endorsed Kennedy’s bid last week when he took her out for soul food in Harlem.
    Those sorts of overlapping loyalties strike some as undemocratic, even in a process where a non-elected governor is picking a non-elected senator.
    “To this working class kid from Queens, it’s unseemly,” said Doug Muzzio, professor of politics at Baruch College. “It looks like Bloomberg is creating a cadre of philosopher kings and queens drawn from the elite. I don’t know that it’s a positive development for New York politics, irrespective of her and her qualifications.”
    No less a political heavyweight than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called her “perfect” for the job. Bloomberg has lavished praise on her, and the politically powerful Kennedy clan has vowed to do everything they can to support her bid.
    Suspicions that the die may already be cast grew when Rep. Charles Rangel, a key adviser to the governor, suggested in an interview that Paterson has already decided. In a press conference Thursday in Harlem, Rangel insisted he meant no...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01500

Caroline may be appointed Senator but the fact remains that she know nothing about upstate NY and it's problems.

Nobody ever cares about upstate NY. Oh they make take a bit more of notice, now that Wall St just about collapsed. They need to look elsewhere in the state to bring in tax revenues. Well, other than taxing just about everything like Paterson is proposing. Cause God forbid that they should cut spending!!!

And if Caroline Kennedy's politics is anything like her uncle Teddy...we will surely be a 'true' socialist state!

It was a listening tour.....not a HEARING TOUR......BIG DIFFERENCE......it's all in who she knows and who wants to move her where.....if she were half
as smart as her family she would run and run fast.........look around girlie...you're a pawn.......comfy underwear and personal pedicurists and all,,,,,you
are owned by other people........not so smart if ya ask me.......run and take the military route....you'd be safer........

yeah, except they never hear the part that says NO MORE TAX INCREASES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Caroline’s sense of entitlement rankles

Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Charles Krauthammer

    “I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are. Except that she has name recognition, but so does J-Lo.”
    — Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.
    Right idea, wrong argument. The problem with Caroline Kennedy’s presumption to Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat is not lack of qualification or experience. The Senate houses lots of inexperienced rookies — wealthy businessmen, sports stars, even the occasional actor.
    The problem is Kennedy’s sense of entitlement. Given her rather modest achievements, she is trading entirely on pedigree.
    I hate to be a good government scold, but wasn’t the American experiment a rather firm renunciation of government by pedigree?
    Yes, the Founders were not Democrats. They believed in aristocracy. But their idea was government by natural — not inherited — aristocracy, an aristocracy of “virtue and talents,” as Jefferson put it.
    And yes, of course, we have our own history of dynastic succession: Adamses and Harrisons, and in the last century, Roosevelts, Kennedys and Bushes. Recently, we’ve even branched out into Argentinestyle marital transmission, as in the Doles and the Clintons.
    It’s not the end of the world, but it is an accelerating trend that need not be encouraged. After all, we have already created another huge distortion in our politics: a plethora of plutocrats in the U.S. Senate, courtesy of our crazed campaign finance laws. If you’re very very rich, you can buy your Senate seat by spending as much of your money as you want. Meanwhile, your poor plebeian opponent is running around groveling for the small contributions allowed by law. Hence the Corzines and the Kohls, who parachute into Congress seemingly out of nowhere.
    Having given this additional leg up to the rich, we should resist packing our legislatures with yet more privileged parachutists, the well-born.
    True, the Brits did it that way for centuries, but with characteristic honesty. They established a house of Parliament exclusively for highborn twits and ensconced them there for life. There they chatter away in supreme irrelevance deep into their dotage. Problem is that the U.S. Senate retains House of Commons powers even as it develops a House of Lords membership.
    Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy. She seems a fine person. She certainly has led the life of a worthy socialite, helping all the right causes. But when the mayor of New York endorses her candidacy by offering, among other reasons, that “her uncle has been one of the best senators that we have had in an awful long time,” we’ve reached the point of embarrassment.
    Nor is Ms. Kennedy alone in her sense of entitlement. Vice President-elect Biden’s Senate seat will now be filled by Edward Kaufman, a family retainer whom no one ever heard of before yesterday. And no one will hear from after two years, at which time Kaufman will dutifully retire. He understands his responsibility: Keep the Delaware Senate seat warm for two years until Joe’s son returns from Iraq to assume his father’s mantle.
    This, of course, is the Kennedy way. In 1960, John Kennedy’s Senate seat was given to his Harvard roommate, one Ben Smith II (priceless name). He stayed on for two years — until Teddy reached the constitutional age of 30 required to succeed his brother.
    In light of the pending dynastic disposition of the New York and Delaware Senate seats, the Illinois way is almost refreshing. At least Gov. Rod Blagojevich (allegedly) made Barack Obama’s seat democratically open to all. Just register the highest bid, eBay style.
    Sadly, however, even this auction was not free of aristo-creep. On the evidence of the U.S. attorney’s criminal complaint, a full one-third of those under consideration were pedigreed: Candidate No. 2 turns out to be the daughter of the speaker of the Illinois House; Candidate No. 5, the fi rstborn son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
    Caroline Kennedy, Beau Biden and Jesse Jackson Jr. could some day become great senators. But in a country where advantages of education, upbringing and wealth already make the playing field extraordinarily uneven, we should resist encouraging the one form of advantage the American Republic strove to abolish: title.
    No lords or .....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00701

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Kennedy balks at disclosing personal wealth
BY KAREN MATTHEWS The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — At this time last year, Caroline Kennedy was promoting “A Family Christmas,” a collection of essays that featured the memory of her father letting her use the White House switchboard to call Santa.
    This year, after warily stepping into the political free-for-all for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s job, Kennedy’s activities during the holiday season included fending off requests to disclose financial information.
    The calls for Kennedy to release her fi - nancial information, required of many public officials including her uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, come after a lifetime of carefully cultivated privacy.
    By all accounts a very wealthy woman who could be worth as much as $400 million, Kennedy has said she will not release details of her finances unless Democratic Gov. David Paterson picks her for the Senate seat that will open up if Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state.
    Before she announced her interest in Clinton’s Senate seat, the 51-year-old lawyer, author, wife and mother had been largely invisible to most Americans, who knew her better as the precocious preschooler from John F. Kennedy’s administration.
    Kennedy, who has spent most of her life in New York since her father’s 1963 assassination, has had a varied professional life.
    A graduate of Harvard and Columbia University Law School, she does not practice law but has co-authored books on the Bill of Rights and the right to privacy. Her other books are on non-controversial topics like Christmas, patriotism and the favorite poems of her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Most of the books were best-sellers, though it is not known how much she earned from them.
    Estimates of Kennedy’s wealth vary. The Daily News of New York added up assets in the public record and came up with a net worth that tops $100 million. But in his 2007 book “American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy,” author C. David Heymann estimated that Kennedy is worth more than $400 million.
    When her mother died in 1994, executors valued the Onassis estate at $43.7 million, a figure that has risen after auctions of various assets. Kennedy and her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., also inherited their father’s share of the large, undisclosed fortune founded by their grandfather, Joseph Kennedy. John F. Kennedy Jr. died in 1999 and left an estimated $50 million estate, with his sister and her children as beneficiaries.
    Kennedy and her husband, museum designer Edwin Schlossberg, live on Park Avenue in a prewar co-op building where a neighbor’s five-bedroom apartment was recently listed for $13 million. Kennedy also owns a 366-acre estate on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts that she inherited from her mother. The property’s worth is estimated at $50 million or more.
    Kennedy met Schlossberg, 63, when she worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art between college and law school. They married in 1986 and have three children, ages 20, 18 and 15.
    Kennedy has served on boards including the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, earning no compensation from those commitments.
    She worked part-time as chief fundraiser for New York City’s public schools from 2002 to 2004 and drew a salary of $1 a year. She wasn’t required to file disclosure forms required of some city employees in policymaking positions.
    Kennedy’s spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said Wednesday that she will comply with applicable financial disclosure laws if she is appointed to the Senate but will not release tax returns. Senators are required to fi le financial disclosure statements each year. Her uncle is estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics to be the seventh richest member of Congress, possibly worth $103.5 million or more.
    Paterson’s office has said ...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01501

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Kennedy says 9/11, Obama led her to seek Senate appointment
BY LARRY NEUMEISTER The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — Caroline Kennedy emerged from weeks of near-silence Friday about her bid for a Senate seat by saying that after a lifetime of closely guarded privacy, she felt compelled to answer the call to service issued by her father a generation ago.
    She said two events shaped her decision to ask Gov. David Paterson 11 days ago to consider her for the position if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state: the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and her work for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
    In her first sit-down interview since she emerged as a Senate hopeful, the 51-year-old daughter of President John F. Kennedy cited her father’s legacy in explaining her decision to seek to serve alongside her uncle, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy.
    “Many people remember that spirit that President Kennedy summoned forth,” she said. “Many people look to me as somebody who embodies that sense of possibility. I’m not saying that I am anything like him, I’m just saying there’s a spirit that I think I’ve grown up with that is something that means a tremendous amount to me.”
    She also credited her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with giving her the courage to run.
    “I think my mother … made it clear that you have to live life by your own terms and you have to not worry about what other people think and you have to have the courage to do the unexpected,” she said.
    Since Kennedy expressed interest in the job, she has faced sometimes sharp criticism that she cut in line ahead of politicians with more experience and has acted as if she were entitled to it because of her political lineage. More than a half-dozen elected officials are vying for the seat, including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and several members of Congress.
    Kennedy said that she had long been encouraged to seek public office and that Clinton’s expected departure from the Senate offered the perfect opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her father, two uncles and cousins.
    “Going into politics is something people have asked me about forever,” a relaxed Kennedy said as she ate a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich and sipped coffee at a diner in Manhattan. “When this opportunity came along, which was sort of unexpected, I thought, ‘Well, maybe now. How about now?’ ”
    She said she realizes she will have to prove herself and “work twice as hard as anybody else.” She acknowledged, “I am an unconventional choice,” but added: “We’re starting to see there are many ways into public life and public service.”
    Since Kennedy’s name first surfaced as a possible replacement for Clinton, her advisers have shielded her from the media, with the exception of a few brief interviews on a swing through upstate New York and a visit to Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton.
    Some commentators likened her to Sarah Palin in the way her dealings with the media were being carefully managed.
    She agreed to sit down for interviews Friday with The Associated Press and NY1 television.
    Kennedy acknowledged that her recent time in the limelight — after a relatively private life as a wife, mother of three, bestselling author and fundraiser in New York City — had not gone entirely smoothly.
    But she said she had turned down interview requests and tried not to appear to be campaigning for the job because she knew that the choice rested solely with the Democratic governor.
    “I was trying to respect the process. It is not a campaign,” she said. “It was misinterpreted. If I were to be selected, I understand public servants have to be accessible.”
    Asked about criticism from other politicians and members of the public that she seems to regard herself as entitled to the job as a member of America’s most storied political dynasty, she said: “Everybody that knows me knows I haven’t really lived that way. … Nobody’s entitled to anything, certainly not me.”
    Kennedy chuckled when she was asked if her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., had ever suggested she run for public office some day. “He usually thought about himself,” she said. “He would be laughing his head off at seeing what’s going on right now.”
    She also was asked to explain why she failed to vote in a number of elections since registering in New York City in 1988, including in 1994 when Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was up for reelection for the seat she hopes to take over.
    “I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record,” she said. “I’m glad it’s been brought to my attention.”
    Former New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who urged Paterson last weekend to consider experienced members of Congress for the job, said she was ....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00104

Oh Brother!!!!!!......where did I put that sharp object????

http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....ily_news_i_woul.html

"I'm really coming into this as somebody who isn't, you know, part of the system, who obviously, you know, stands for the values of, you know, the Democratic Party," Kennedy told the Daily News Saturday during a wide-ranging interview.

3 times in one sentence.  Wow, she's articulate, eh?

She's a has been to the next generation..........passe to those under 30.......

Quoted from 147

http://www.nydailynews.com/new.....ily_news_i_woul.html

"I'm really coming into this as somebody who isn't, you know, part of the system, who obviously, you know, stands for the values of, you know, the Democratic Party," Kennedy told the Daily News Saturday during a wide-ranging interview.

3 times in one sentence.  Wow, she's articulate, eh?

People say ya know when they don't know anything. Daughter of a President not part of the system? Stick a fork in Caroline, ya know, she's done. Even the Democrats are, ya know, running from her. Bring in Alan Keyes, so what if he's a carpetbagger, you know he can speak.

Quoted Text

Not this Sen. Kennedy

    If you’ve never held elected office and want to, you’ve got to start somewhere. But it shouldn’t be at the top, especially when you aren’t running for the office but asking that it be handed to you, as Caroline Kennedy is. She says she doesn’t feel a sense of entitlement, but other than her family name, why else would she be seriously considered as a replacement for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate?
    It’s true that other recent New York senators — James Buckley, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Hillary and Caroline’s Uncle Bobby — did not hold elected office before securing the seat. But they all stood for election, whereas Caroline is waging a “non-campaign” campaign to have Gov. David Paterson appoint her.
    And so far it’s been an inept effort, with nearly every step a misstep. There was the curious oneday tour upstate, where she met with the mayor of Syracuse but refused to take any questions from reporters; and then, when she took a few at the next stop in Rochester, gave only the most general, non-responsive answers. After that, reporters were instructed to submit their questions in writing — and still got answers that were vague, unenlightening and referred to Caroline like royalty, in the third person.
    It didn’t go much better back in New York City, where she lives. In two separate stories the Daily News reported that her voting record was spotty, and that she seldom supported candidates with campaign contributions or otherwise.
    Nor did she distinguish herself in an interview with a couple of New York Times reporters published this weekend. When pushed she couldn’t really say why she wanted to be senator or why she would make a good one — or a better one than some of the other candidates, like Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. While she said that the times called for a different kind of person, she didn’t give any indication how she would be different. Her positions sounded like so much Democratic orthodoxy, including in the field of education, where she is most well versed by virtue of her work the last six years raising money for a nonprofit that helps New York City schools. Orthodoxy there means not challenging the teachers union on things like tenure, something she was asked about in the interview but danced around.
    Finally, and perhaps most................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00701

Read the comment, in blue, at the end of this article about New Yorkers:

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 9:55am EST
Kennedy is confronted by gender gap
The Business Review (Albany)

Caroline Kennedy's informal U.S. Senate campaign is facing a gender gap, according to a national poll.

Fifty-seven percent of the women taking part in the new CNN-Opinion Research Corp. Poll said that Kennedy is qualified to be a senator from New York. But only 47 percent of men agreed.

The poll was not confined to New York voters, but was a gauge of national reaction. It was conducted Dec. 19-21, with interviews of 1,013 Americans. Its margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Kennedy has expressed interest in replacing Sen. Hillary Clinton when the latter resigns to become secretary of state. Clinton's successor will be appointed by Gov. David Paterson.

CNN's polling director, Keating Holland, says that the gender gap reflects dramatically different perceptions of Kennedy's record.

"Men may think of qualifications for public office in terms of work experience, while women may be looking at a candidate's life experience," says Holland. "Caroline Kennedy has a personal history that may be compelling to many women, but her resume is not very long, and that may be a mark against her to some men."



READER COMMENTS

(2) Comments
The Legend  December 30, 2008 12:09PM EST
Since a two-year Senator with the right complexion but with no economic or executive experience was elected President, I guess qualifications don't matter. What's another brainless incompetent to the Dems? They have so many already.

b camp  December 30, 2008 11:34AM EST
Since when do qualifications matter to be a politician in NY. The word around the rest of the world is that NY was the place inexperienced wannabe's go to get elected because NYer's are all about glam over substance.Caroline should be a model NY politician. Oh yeah, can we please hear some more snide comments about Palin's lack of experience.NYer's are a joke!!!

http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2008/12/29/daily8.html?surround=lfn

I would certainly rather have someone representing me as an upstate NYer that doesn't need to learn about the "upstate experience".  She is clueless.