Ted Kennedy
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For other persons named Ted Kennedy, see Ted Kennedy (disambiguation).
| Edward Moore Kennedy | |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office November 6, 1962 – Serving with John Kerry |
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| Preceded by | Benjamin A. Smith |
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| Succeeded by | Incumbent (2013) |
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| Born | February 22, 1932 (age 75) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | (1) Joan Bennett Kennedy (married 1958 – divorced 1982) (2) Victoria Reggie Kennedy (married 1992 – present) |
| Profession | lawyer |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (born February 22, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party.[1] In office since November 1962, Kennedy is presently the second-longest serving member of the Senate, after Robert Byrd of West Virginia.[1][2] The most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he is the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in the 1960s.
Ted Kennedy is a staunch advocate of liberal principles, and is one of the most influential and enduring icons of his party. He is known for being a skillful backroom negotiator who occasionally works with Republican legislators and presidents to reach an acceptable compromise.
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[edit] Family and youth
Kennedy is the youngest of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, a prominent Irish-American family. He attended the Fessenden School, and later Milton Academy and entered Harvard College in 1950, where he resided in Winthrop House. Kennedy was also a member of the Owl Club. He was expelled from Harvard in May 1951 after he was caught cheating on an examination.[1] Kennedy entered the United States Army for two years and was assigned to the SHAPE headquarters in Paris. He eventually re-entered Harvard, graduating in June 1956. In the 1955 Harvard/Yale football game (Yale won 21 to 7), Kennedy caught Harvard's only touchdown pass.[1] In 1958, he attended the Hague Academy of International Law. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1959. While he was in law school, he managed his brother John's 1958 Senate re-election campaign.
His home is in Hyannis, Massachusetts, where he lives with his second wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy - a Washington lawyer and the daughter of a Louisiana judge -, and her children, Curran and Caroline. Victoria is president and co-founder of Common Sense about Kids and Guns, an advocacy group which seeks to reduce gun deaths and injuries to children in the United States. He has three grown children from his first marriage with Virginia Joan Bennett, whom he met while delivering a speech at Manhattanville College: Kara (born 1960), Edward Jr. (born 1961), Patrick (born 1967), and five grandchildren. After his brothers John and Robert were assassinated (in 1963 and 1968 respectively), he took on the role of surrogate father for his brothers' 13 children.[3]
In 1962, Kennedy was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by his oldest surviving brother, John, upon the latter's election as President of the United States. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2006.
[edit] Early career
Kennedy is the senior Democratic Party member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He also serves on the Judiciary Committee, where he is the senior Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he is the senior Democratic representative on the Seapower Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, a founder of the Congressional Friends of Ireland, and a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Kennedy's career in the Senate has frequently attracted national attention. The year after he was first elected to the Senate his brother President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
In 1964, Kennedy was in a plane crash in which the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II (D-Ind.), and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleedings.
In 1968, his last surviving brother, Robert, was assassinated as well during his bid to be nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presidency. Kennedy delivered a very emotional eulogy at Robert's funeral. After the shock from this event wore off, Kennedy was looked upon as a likely future presidential candidate. For about a year, the Democratic establishment began to focus attention on him as the new "carrier of the torch" for the Kennedys and the party. The 1993 book The Last Brother by Joe McGinniss portrayed Kennedy as particularly devastated by the death of Robert, in that Ted was closer to Robert than any other member of the Kennedy family.
In January 1969, Kennedy defeated Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long to become Senate Majority Whip. He would serve as Whip until January 1971, when he was defeated by Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.
In October 1971, Kennedy called for the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland, and for all political participants there to begin talks on creating a United Ireland.
[edit] Chappaquiddick incident
The Chappaquiddick Incident, more commonly referred to as simply “Chappaquiddick”, refers to the circumstances surrounding the 1969 death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker for Senator Kennedy. Kopechne was killed when the Senator became disoriented and drove his vehicle off of a bridge and into a channel after a party at Martha's Vineyard. Due to the circumstances of the incident and the way in which it was handled, it quickly became a national scandal and it has influenced much of Senator Kennedy’s later career.
[edit] Presidential bid
Kennedy deflected supporters who urged him to run for President in 1972 and 1976 by citing family concerns, in light of the fact of his brothers' assassinations. He finally threw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination in the 1980 presidential election by launching an unusual, insurgent campaign against the sitting president, Jimmy Carter, a member of his own party. Despite much early support, his bid was ultimately unsuccessful. Carter was highly unpopular at the time of Kennedy's announcement, and Kennedy could have expected to do well against the incumbent president. But the Iran hostage crisis gave President Carter a large boost in the polls that lasted for several months. The upswing in Carter's popularity knocked the wind out of Kennedy's candidacy, which was predicated on dislodging an unpopular president. In addition, the Chappaquiddick incident still dogged the senator, and his opponents often invoked the highly recognizable melody of Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 hit song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to remind voters of the tragedy and scandal. Kennedy's campaign received substantial negative press from what pundits criticized as a rambling response to the question "Why do you want to be President?"[4] Kennedy won 10 presidential primaries against Carter, who won 24. Eventually he bowed out of the race, but delivered a rousing speech before the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City that many consider to be one of his finest moments.[5]
[edit] Democratic Party icon
Since his presidential bid, Kennedy has become one of the most recognizable and influential members of the party. In 2004, Kennedy was involved in the failed presidential bid of his fellow Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, speaking for Kerry multiple times and lending his chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to the Kerry campaign. Kennedy stated that he would have supported Kerry should he have chosen to run for president in 2008.
In April 2006, Kennedy was selected by TIME as one of "America's 10 Best Senators"; the magazine noted that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country" and that "by the late '90s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him".[6]
As of 2006, Kennedy is the second-longest serving current senator, only behind Robert Byrd. Kennedy won an eighth full term (and ninth overall term) in 2006. If he serves out his full six-year term, he will have served in the U.S. Senate for fifty years.
Currently, Senator Kennedy is the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. As chairman, he raised the minimum wage by $2.10 to $7.25 on February 1, 2007. The bill also included some controversial tax cuts for small businesses and higher taxes for many $1 million-plus executives. Kennedy was quoted as saying, "Passing this wage hike represents a small, but necessary step to help lift America's working poor out of the ditches of poverty and onto the road toward economic prosperity."[7]
In 2006, Kennedy released a children's book My Senator and Me: A Dog's-Eye View of Washington, D.C.[8] Also in 2006, Kennedy released a political history entitled America Back on Track[9]
[edit] Political views
[edit] No Child Left Behind
Kennedy was a major player in the bipartisan team that wrote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which, according to both Kennedy and President Bush, was a compromise. He then worked to get it passed in a Republican controlled Congress, despite the opposition of members from both parties.
[edit] Right to abortion
Although he has been a staunch advocate of abortion rights for the past 30 years, Kennedy only adopted this position after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Prior to that, he held a pro-life position. A letter to a constituent, dated August 3, 1971 opposes "the legalization of abortion on demand" saying that it "is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life".[10] Kennedy's reversal on this issue after Roe v. Wade became a source of continuing dispute between him and the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. In 1987, Kennedy delivered an impassioned speech condemning Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork as a "right-wing extremist" and warning that "Robert Bork's America" would be one marked by back alley abortions and other backward practices. Kennedy's strong opposition to Bork's nomination is commonly seen as a prominent factor in the Senate's rejection of Bork's candidacy. Similar concerns have been raised in more recent Supreme Court nominations, as well; it is possible that Kennedy's opposition to Bork set a precedent. In recent years, he has argued that much of the debate over abortion is a false dichotomy. Speaking at the National Press Club in 2005, he remarked, "Surely, we can all agree that abortion should be rare, and that we should do all we can to help women avoid the need to face that decision."[11]
[edit] Immigration policy
Ted Kennedy was a strong supporter of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act—signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson—which dramatically changed US immigration policy.[12] "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs."[13] Kennedy is now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Immigration, and remains a strong advocate for immigrants, both documented and illegal.
This legislation replaced the Immigration Act of 1924, which favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. Proponents of the 1965 bill argued that immigration laws and quotas were discriminatory, and that American immigration policy should accept people not on the basis of their nationality. This also abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
[edit] Gun politics
Ted Kennedy has been a staunch supporter of gun control initiatives. He was one of the 16 senators who voted against the Vitter Amendment.
[edit] Alternative energy
Ted Kennedy has maintained a record in favor of alternative energy sources as seen in his voting record as a senator.[14]
[edit] War on Terrorism
Though a supporter of the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Kennedy has been a vocal critic of the American-led 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. He has also been a harsh critic of the way the invasion of Iraq was planned and conducted by the Bush administration. Kennedy also has said that the best vote he had ever cast in the Senate was his vote against giving President Bush the authority to use force against Iraq.[citation needed]
On September 27, 2004, Kennedy made a speech on the Senate floor regarding the war in Iraq, just prior to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.[15]
In early 2007, just prior to President Bush's announcement that he would initiate a troop surge in Iraq, Senator Kennedy made a speech at the National Press Club opposing it.[16] Kennedy was the first Senator in the 110th Congress to propose legislation opposing the President's troop surge.
[edit] Judicial appointments
Kennedy led a forty-five member all Democrat Senate filibuster to block the appointment of former assistant solicitor general Miguel Estrada to the United States court of appeals. When Estrada withdrew his nomination, Kennedy proclaimed it was a "a victory for the Constitution".[17]
[edit] Same-sex marriage
Kennedy is one of only five senators who have publicly announced support for same-sex marriage. Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts is the only state in the United States within which same-sex marriage is legal.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c http://kennedy.senate.gov/senator/index.cfm
- ^ http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/chronlist.pdf
- ^ Chris Black et. al., Final memorial set for victims of Kennedy crash, CNN News, July 24, 1999. Accessed online 26 December 2006.
- ^ Ted Kennedy, NNDB
- ^ Ted Kennedy: 1980 Democratic National Convention Address
- ^ Ted Kennedy: The Dogged Achiever, an April 2006 TIME magazine article
- ^ Senate votes to raise minimum wage, Chicago Tribute, February 1, 2007. Accessed online 22 February 2007.
- ^ Ted Kennedy pens children's book, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 9, 2006. Accessed online 26 December 2006.
- ^ Sen. Ted Kennedy and 'America Back on Track', NPR, April 20, 2006. Accessed online 22 February 2007.
- ^ A Tale of Two Teddies: Pro-choice Kennedy was pro-life in 1971, World NetDaily, August 3, 2005. Accessed online 26 December 2006.
- ^ Dionne, E.J. "The New Liberalism: Democrats Need to Show Their Family Values", Washington Post, January 14, 2005; Page A19.
- ^ Three Decades of Mass Immigration: The Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act, Center for Immigration Studies, September 1995. Accessed online 26 December 2006.
- ^ U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1–3.
- ^ Ted Kennedy on Energy & Oil, On the Issues (issues2000.org). Accessed online 26 December 2006.
- ^ Senator Kennedy delivers a speech at GW University: The Effect of the War in Iraq On America's Security. Originally on the home page of kennedy.senate.gov, archived on the Internet Archive 17 January 2006.
- ^ Sen. Ted Kennedy at the National Press Club, YouTube.com, January 9, 2007. Accessed online 22 February 2007.
- ^ http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/04/estrada.withdraws/
[edit] Further reading
- Bly, Nellie. (1996). The Kennedy Men: Three Generations of Sex, Scandal and Secrets. ISBN 1-57566-106-3.
- Burke, Richard E. (1993). The Senator: My Ten Years With Ted Kennedy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-95133-7.
- Clymer, Adam (1999). Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography. Wm. Morrow & Company. ISBN 0-688-14285-0.
- Damore, Leo. (1988). Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up. ISBN 0-89526-564-8.
[edit] External links
[edit] Official sites
- Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Senate homepage
- Campaign homepage
[edit] Kennedy in his own words
- Eulogy for Robert Kennedy: audio
- Webcast of Kennedy at a January 21, 2003 National Press Club event, via NPR: provides corroboration for his 2006 re-election run
- Ted Kennedy's 1980 Democratic National Convention Address
- Kennedy on Iraq at the National Press Club: Kennedy on the Iraq War, which he describes as "George Bush's Vietnam"
[edit] Neutral informational sites
- Ted Kennedy on the issues
- Project Vote Smart - Political Profile
- Federal Election Commission - Edward Moore Kennedy campaign finance reports and data
- New York Times - Edward Kennedy News collected news and commentary
- SourceWatch Congresspedia - Edward M. Kennedy profile
- FBI FOIA Investigation on Chappaquiddick
- Voting record maintained by the Washington Post
[edit] Pro-Kennedy informational sites
[edit] Other
- Terror List Snag Nearly Grounded Ted Kennedy (USA Today article)
- Biography, via George Bush Foundation
- Biography of Ted Kennedy at nndb.com
| Committee | Position |
|---|---|
| Armed Services | Subcommittee Chairman |
| Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions | Committee Chairman |
| Joint Economic | |
| Judiciary | Subcommittee Chairman |
| Massachusetts's current delegation to the United States Congress |
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| Senators: Edward Kennedy (D), John Kerry (D)
Representative(s): John Olver (D), Richard Neal (D), Jim McGovern (D), Barney Frank (D), Marty Meehan (D), John F. Tierney (D), Ed Markey (D), Mike Capuano (D), Stephen Lynch (D), Bill Delahunt (D) All delegations: Alabama • Alaska • Arizona • Arkansas • California • Colorado • Connecticut • Delaware • Florida • Georgia • Hawaii • Idaho • Illinois • Indiana • Iowa • Kansas • Kentucky • Louisiana • Maine • Maryland • Massachusetts • Michigan • Minnesota • Mississippi • Missouri • Montana • Nebraska • Nevada • New Hampshire • New Jersey • New Mexico • New York • North Carolina • North Dakota • Ohio • Oklahoma • Oregon • Pennsylvania • Rhode Island • South Carolina • South Dakota • Tennessee • Texas • Utah • Vermont • Virginia • Washington • West Virginia • Wisconsin • Wyoming — American Samoa • District of Columbia • Guam • Puerto Rico • U.S. Virgin Islands |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kennedy, Edward Moore |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kennedy, Ted |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American politician; Democratic Senator for Massachusetts |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 22, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since March 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1932 births | People from Boston | Milton Academy alumni | Hague Academy of International Law people | Harvard Crimson football players | Irish-American politicians | Kennedy family | Siblings of Presidents of the United States | Living people | Roman Catholic politicians | United States Army officers | United States Senators from Massachusetts | Current Members of the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services | University of Virginia alumni | John F. Kennedy
