Buffalo News Interview: Caroline Kennedy
Kennedy takes pragmatic view of Senate job
ALBANY –She may have a privileged background and a reputation for being a bit reserved, but Caroline Kennedy would welcome a new title: pothole senator.
“That’s exactly how I do see it. I think the best senators are the ones who fight hardest for their state,” Kennedy said Saturday, describing how she would define her job if selected by Gov. David A. Paterson to fill the seat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will vacate when she is confirmed as U. S. Secretary of State.
Broader national and international concerns might come with time, Kennedy said in an interview with The Buffalo News, but not in the beginning.
And of criticism that her interests in the Senate might not be provincial enough, Kennedy said she would also push to get Clinton’s seat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the panel that likely will be considering how to divvy up hundreds of billions of dollars in federal bailout money among the states next year.
“That committee is going to be absolutely critical right now,” she said.
Kennedy said her close ties to President-elect Barack Obama, as well as to friends on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Senate, will help her deliver federal money to New York at a time when Albany faces a growing budget deficit.
Her celebrity status won’t hurt the state, either, she hinted.
“Especially since the person who’s going to be appointed by the governor will be very junior, if not the most junior person in the Senate, those kinds of relationships really do matter in Washington,” she said. “I think [my celebrity] will help deliver for New York because I think all the states are competing for scarce resources and I think that’s one of the things I have to offer in terms of fighting for the state to get our fair share, because we typically don’t.
“We really need the money, and I’d love to make the case for that,” she added.
Thus began a new chapter in Kennedy’s fledgling campaign to replace Clinton. Paterson is expected to make an appointment after Clinton’s confirmation for the Cabinet position.
Opening up
After weeks of avoiding media and being criticized for a Sarah Palin-like campaign strategy of restricting reporters’ access to her, Kennedy spent the past two days opening up to a handful of reporters. Still, she remained vague on several matters, from policy issues to her family’s finances, which she will only disclose if Paterson taps her for the Senate job.
In her interview with The News, Kennedy said that if Paterson does not select her for the seat, she would not challenge a fellow Democrat for the job in 2010 — when the question of who will hold the post will go before voters in a special election.
“Because I’m a Democrat and he’ll pick a Democrat, I’ll want to work hard for that ticket,” she explained.
Kennedy took a pass when asked if Obama has encouraged her to seek the Senate seat.
“He just encouraged me generally, but I’m not going to get into the kind of specifics for that,” she said.
In the past couple weeks, Kennedy has had a starring role in New York’s political theater. She has been cheered by many, but has also gotten increasingly bad reviews from Democrats, who have dismissed her as a celebrity in the tradition of Jennifer Lopez, or suggested she is a member of the elite who thinks she is entitled to the job.
“It’s pretty much what I thought [would happen],” Kennedy said of the critical reaction and what she called the “disproportionate share” of attention she has garnered compared with the dozen of so other interested candidates, who include Rep. Brian Higgins and Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown.
“It’s New York politics,” she said of the political firestorm she has helped create.
But Kennedy has been criticized for moves she and her advisers have made, intentionally or not, that appear to be trying to box Paterson into selecting her for the seat.
“I think people see this through the lens of a campaign, and it isn’t a campaign. Certainly that was not my intent,” she said.
Kennedy insisted her trip to Buffalo and other upstate cities to meet with mayors was meant as a fact-finding trip to an area that she knows little about.
“There is a lot of interest in me, so when I visited upstate, it looked [to others] like a campaign. But my intention and what I was hoping to do was at least introduce myself and have some meetings and learn a bit. But then it looked like a campaign and people read into that,” she said.
“So, I think going forward, it’s important the governor have all the room he has to make this decision, and [emphasize that] it’s not a campaign in any way,” she said.
Kennedy did not elaborate on how she and her advisers might tone down what some Democrats have complained has turned into a circuslike effort designed to stir backing for the 51-year-old Kennedy.
Lots of competition
Kennedy acknowledged that she faces a long list of qualified competitors for the job. One of them is Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who was married to Kennedy’s cousin, Kerry Kennedy. That marriage ended in a bitter divorce several years ago, and the split has led to speculation that the Kennedy family is taking delight in seeing Caroline Kennedy give Cuomo a run for the Senate post.
“That is not coming from me in any way,” Kennedy said, adding that she and Cuomo “have spoken throughout this process.”
She said she worked for Cuomo years ago at a housing group he had founded.
“People tend to make a lot of all that different kind of gossip, but I admire his service and I think he’s doing a great job,” Kennedy said.
For upstaters, the wrangling over the Senate seat is worrisome. Every major state post — governor, attorney general, comptroller, leaders of the Senate and Assembly and U. S. senators — are either from New York City or its inner-ring suburbs. Kennedy lives in a Park Avenue apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“I know this is a struggle and a dynamic that goes on all the time, and this is maybe an odd confluence of circumstances that we have right now,” Kennedy said of the downstate-only monopoly on leadership posts.
“But if it were me that were selected, I would try to do the same kind of job Hillary Clinton did in visiting upstate and taking special time to learn about the places I do know less about,” she said.
Kennedy said she knows the economy upstate is “really difficult — but I think that’s obviously something people who live there know much better than I do.”
She said she would push for more federal aid for public-private partnerships, such as the emerging Buffalo medical corridor, and seek to halt government aid to companies that ship jobs overseas.
Last week, in response to questions from The Buffalo News, Kennedy said the North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, has had “unintended consequences in some regions of New York,” and agrees with Obama that there needs to be a “careful look at the agreement and pay particular attention to its impact on jobs and wages in American manufacturing communities.”
But upstate is clearly largely unknown to Kennedy, who, in addition to her Manhattan apartment, owns an estate on Martha’s Vineyard and once had a summer home on Long Island. She said she’s only taken short trips upstate and never a longer period of time upstate.
“I do remember going with my Uncle Bobby (Kennedy) and I have friends who live not far north of the city, not far upstate. My daughter went to camp in the Adirondacks. So, it’s more vacationing. And I have, of course, friends who have moved from upstate down to the city,” she said.
With a net worth estimated at between $100 million and $400 million — figures she won’t discuss — Kennedy has been criticized as coming from a wealthy dynasty that puts her out of touch with the vast majority of New Yorkers.
“I certainly understand why they would think that way, and I certainly do have a lot of advantages in my life,” she said. “But I also come from a tradition and a family that has been for 50 years or more fighting for people who don’t have those advantages, and that’s something and a legacy that I take very seriously in my own work.”
Cites work for schools
Kennedy cited her work raising money for New York City public schools and research on books that put her in contact with everyone from people who lost their homes through eminent domain to those whose First Amendment rights were abused.
“So I see exactly the kinds of struggles families are facing,” she said.
How has the nation’s economic downturn, which has squeezed millions of people, affected Kennedy’s family?
She would not say specifically.
“The economic downturn has affected everyone. Fortunately, I’m not worried about losing my home. But absolutely this affected everyone and everyone I know. I know people who are losing their homes, and we all know people who lost their jobs. So, nobody is unaffected by this,” she said.
Many Democrats have openly wondered why Kennedy feels her first political office should be such a prize — a position in the exclusive club of 100 U. S. senators.
Kennedy acknowledged that in a different time she might have taken a “slower path” in the political arena, and that if she does not get the Senate job she would give thought to other elected posts.
“But this is a crisis, and I felt I might have something to offer that can make things better,” she said of the problems facing the nation.
What exactly she has to offer has been unclear to many. In the interview, Kennedy talked of focusing on improving the economy, increasing access to health care and bettering public schools. But she has not offered up any specific plans to do so.
Her first piece of legislation as a senator would be, she said, to amend the federal No Child Left Behind education law enacted suring the Bush administration “so we can get it right.” She did not say how she would change the law.
Kennedy started her new tour Friday in interviews with the Associated Press and NY1, a Manhattan cable station. She told AP she knew she would have to prove herself because of her name and lack of political experience.
“I came into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anybody else,” she said. “I am an unconventional choice.”
By Saturday morning, she was dining with representatives from the New York Times, dodging, according to the newspaper, questions about several policy matters, such as proposals to abolish tenure for teachers.
A week ago, in brief responses to The Buffalo News on a dozen topics, Kennedy portrayed herself as a liberal. She wants more gun controls, backs gay marriage rights, opposes vouchers for private schools and the death penalty. She thinks the Bush administration’s tax cuts should be rolled back for wealthy people, but not right now.
Kennedy sought to break off the interview with The Buffalo News Saturday when a question turned to her family’s finances, leaving unasked a series of policy questions.
On her uncle Ted Kennedy’s Senate Web site, there is a section that begins: “The enduring legacy of the Kennedy family is public service.”
And since 1953, there have been only two years when a Kennedy family member has not served in the U. S. Senate.
How important, especially given her uncle’s terminal brain cancer, is it for Kennedy and her family to get her appointed to the Senate to keep the family’s tradition going?
“I’m not looking at it as a family tradition in any way,” she said. “[We’re] much more a bunch of individuals, as anybody who knows our family can certainly tell you.”
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