Who will carry the Kennedy torch?

The Kennedy heir with the most promising chance of holding statewide office any time soon is Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, 48, the oldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, known by her siblings as "the nun."

Kennedy women are not encouraged to run for office -- Kennedy Townsend is in fact the only one to have done so. And she didn't look like she was off and running for the political world when she married her Harvard literature tutor and shuffled off to New Mexico.

But there, in addition to beginning her family of four girls, Kennedy Townsend got her law degree. After moving back East, and losing a 1986 Maryland House race, she wrote a number of articles for the Washington Monthly.

"Our schools are hotbeds of violence, vandalism and unethical behavior," she wrote in 1992. "You can't teach community service out of a textbook; it takes time and thought, which, of course, takes effort. And that, for some educators, is a tough concept to accept."

In '94, lackluster gubernatorial candidate Parris Glendening tapped her as his running mate, to add some sizzle to his steak, and the team eked out a narrow victory. After a shaky start as the state's No. 2, Townsend has, like her cousin Patrick, proved an able fund-raiser.

In 1998, for the reelection campaign, Kennedy Townsend raised about a half million dollars -- the vast majority of it from outside Maryland -- enabling the Glendening-Townsend team to once again defeat its Republican challengers.

Like Patrick, Kennedy Townsend seems to have missed out on a healthy helping of the family charisma. In a 1997 Washington Post interview, she acknowledged that people "expect a great deal" of her because of her name.

"Some expectations are very high, and it's hard to live up to those expectations. Some people come and maybe want me to be something I'm not. I wish I didn't disappoint everybody."

People seem less disappointed these days. By most accounts, Kennedy Townsend is a tireless worker who has grown in her four-plus years in office.

For Republicans, Kennedy Townsend's uncle Teddy -- despite his impressive record of legislative successes -- has been reduced to a punch line, a symbol of all that is wrong with liberal Democrats. During last week's Senate health care debate, you couldn't hear a Republican mention his opponents without dragging out that nomenclatural albatross "Kennedy" -- GOP shorthand for "big government, big taxes, ineffective and out of date."

But, unlike Ted, Joe II and Patrick, Kennedy Townsend is a "new Democrat." The Democratic Leadership Council's Al From has called her "a national leader in the new-Democrat movement" for "her landmark work on crime, community service and character education."

Days before this latest family tragedy, Kennedy Townsend held a successful fund-raiser at the Baltimore Zoo, a move widely perceived as her first step toward succeeding Glendening when he's term-limited out of office in 2002.

If she ends up running and winning that governor's race, Kennedy Townsend will have an ally in the Maryland House of Delegates. Her cousin Mark Shriver, the son of Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, has been serving as a delegate there since 1994.

Next Page: Kennedys here, there, everywhere

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