Can't get enough of the Kennedys? You're in luck, because Chicago businessman Chris Kennedy, son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, is reportedly ready to throw his hat into the busy Illinois Senate ring as early as this week.
Roland Burris, appointed by disgraced and impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has rapidly become what he didn't aspire to be, a mere placeholder for a host of ambitious politicians chasing the Senate seat that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, brother of the city's mayor, was considered a shoo-in, but took his name out of contention, creating even more of a sense that a rare (Democrats-only) prize was up for grabs. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a wealthy banking heir, has an exploratory committee up and running. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan are weighing bids. Now comes Mr. Kennedy, apparently on the basis of a poll showing his name alone gives him a good shot in a crowded field for the Democratic nomination. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Mr. Kennedy recently hired the big guns among Chicago political professionals, the former firm of Obama adviser David Axelrod.
Mr. Kennedy has long avoided politics and notoriety, unlike his brother Joseph P. Kennedy II, who held a Massachusetts house seat for a decade, and sister Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who failed in a Maryland gubernatorial bid in 2002. Mr. Kennedy's status as a so-called outsider is surely a plus in an Illinois political climate rife recently with corruption and scandal. The eighth of RFK's 11 children, Mr. Kennedy lives quietly with his wife of 22 years and four children, running Merchandise Mart Properties, a company that for decades was the basis of the later-generation Kennedy family fortune. In 1998, 53 years after it was acquired by Joseph P. Kennedy, it was sold to Vornado Realty Trust for the equivalent of $550 million.
Mr. Obama himself was a near-political neophyte five years ago facing a crowded Illinois Senate field, when the way was almost magically cleared for him as one deep-pocketed rival after another was felled by suspiciously-hyped divorce "scandals," in a series of events seldom told and never investigated. Who among the current contenders might benefit from such lightning strikes via the front pages of the Chicago papers will be one thing to watch as the Democratic scramble for the former Obama seat develops.
-- Holman W. Jenkins Jr
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