By Matt Rooney
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There was a time when the thought of Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson losing a Massachusetts race for anything – from dog catcher to U.S. Senator – would’ve been unthinkable. Sure enough, Congressman Joe Kennedy went down in flames on Tuesday in a hotly-contested Democrat primary contest. Camelot is over. The magic is gone. The spark has extinguished. Good riddance.
By the way: this is likely grim news for his relative-in-law down in South Jersey.
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There’s a Kennedy (by marriage) on the ballot this year in NJ-02: Amy Kennedy. She wasn’t born into America’s most infamous political dynasty. She married Patrick Kennedy, a now-former member of Congress who honored his late father Ted’s tradition of driving like an asshole while under the influence. Like Joe and Patrick, Amy believes her surname entitles her to a job on Capitol Hill.
The American people don’t seem to agree.
2016 was a bad year for political dynasties. Jeb Bush – once considered a president-in-waiting – crashed and burned spectacularly in the GOP primary. Hillary Clinton found herself similarly unable to leverage the Clinton name into anything but more scandals and a humiliating Electoral College defeat.
From what we can tell, the public mood doesn’t seem to have changed much over the past four years. That’s no more true for the Kennedys who suffered a well-produced and absolutely damning Chappaquiddick film in 2018.
Meanwhile, the sprawling, working class Second Congressional District is an Obama-Trump district that’s culturally conservative. It’s presently represented by Jeff Van Drew who, as a Democrat and now more recently as a Republican, is comfortable in a House hearing just the same as a Gloucester County gun range, Salem rodeo (yes, they have one), Cumberland farm fair or a Cape May County boardwalk concession. Amy Kennedy’s bio reports that she was raised in Atlantic County but she presents as someone far more at home in a chaise lounge at a certain famous Hyannisport compound.
Also like Joe, Amy is having a great deal of trouble explaining her rationale for a run. Van Drew is pretty clear: he’s running unapologetically against his former party which has lost it’s collective mind. The top two issues listed on Amy’s campaign page: “mental health” and climate change. Ahead of jobs! Atlantic County has Great Depression-level unemployment this spring thanks to her ally Phil Murphy’s lockdown orders. Does this sound like someone in touch with her district? Or hoping to coast to election on the strength of a family brand?
Making predictions is dangerous in such an unsettled political environment.
I will say this: I’ll be shocked if independent-minded South Jersey is the one place in America this year to endorse a return to dynastic politics.
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