When members of the Kennedy family joined President Biden in Philadelphia to support his re-election — and denounce the presidential candidacy of this generation’s best-known Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — one person came forward to champion the cause of the family: his younger sister Kerry.
“Almost all of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s grandchildren support Joe Biden. » Mrs Kennedy said as her siblings and Mr. Biden flanked her on stage. “It’s true: The Kennedy family is supporting Joe Biden for president.”
It was not the first time that Mrs. Kennedy, the seventh child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, was the face of the family’s backlash against her brother. While Mr Kennedy has emerged as a skeptic of Covid-19 vaccines and a purveyor of conspiracy theories about his father’s assassination, the onus is on Mrs Kennedy to distance herself from her family. of the brother she has long kept close and to keep the legacy of a proud and private family as she disappears from the political scene.
To a large extent, Mrs. Kennedy’s siblings say, her outsized role is a consequence of the affection she showed him. brother since they were children and played on the grounds of the family estate in Hickory Hill, Virginia – and the disappointment she feels now. It’s also political: She says her brother’s insurgent campaign threatens Mr. Biden’s re-election and is aware that her family could shoulder some of the blame if Donald J. Trump returns to the White House next year.
“I love Bobby,” she said in an interview. “It’s heartbreaking to be in this position.”
But Kerry Kennedy’s decision to help lead an inevitably sensitive action against a member of her family also reflects her concern about the legacy of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rightsthe organization founded upon the death of her father in 1968 and which she has led for 15 years.
As president, she championed causes that reflected her father’s work: international human rights, addressing health care disparities, and advocating for immigrants. In some cases, the positions taken by his brother, notably his opposition to Covid vaccination, go directly against the mission of the organization.
“Kerry feels a particular burden with his candidacy – a burden that negatively impacts his work,” said Christopher G. Kennedy, one of their brothers. “She has supported hundreds of human rights activists around the world. His abilities would be diminished if the Kennedy name were associated with outsider thinking, outlandish ideas, and faulty judgment.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declined to comment on his sister’s role in the Biden campaign. “I think I’m going to stay out of this controversy,” he said in a text message.
It has been 56 years since Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. But Ms Kennedy, 64, said many people, particularly younger generations, no longer distinguish between a father and son who have the same name.
“Anyone can look at the responses on my X feed or on Instagram and see that there’s a lot of confusion,” she said in the interview. “I was forced to clarify the organization’s divergent views on issues such as vaccine safety, the role of HIV in causing AIDS, why people are transgender and the role of platforms to combat misinformation, to name a few. »
Ms. Kennedy’s view on the potential impact of her brother’s candidacy is not shared by the entire family. “I think the mistake the media makes is to think that his appeal to people is based solely on his relationship with our family,” said Douglas H. Kennedy, another of their brothers, who did not join his brothers and sisters in the fight because, he said, about his work as a correspondent on Fox News. “I believe his supporters are not affected by the concerns of his siblings or cousins. His supporters believe in his message. I don’t think people speaking out against him will have much effect on that support. »
The Biden campaign disagrees. There are plans to deploy Ms. Kennedy, along with other members of her family, to key states in the coming months if her brother continues to appear on the voting rolls. “I told the Biden campaign that I will campaign anywhere they want me to go,” she said.
Biden campaign officials said their polls showed that many people don’t know much about Mr. Kennedy or what he stands for, and that members of the Kennedy family are particularly good at filling in the gaps.
“We are honored to have the support of the Kennedys and look forward to working with them to spread the message on the campaign trail about how the president is carrying on Kennedy’s legacy,” said Lauren Hitt, campaign spokesperson. .
Ms. Kennedy is no stranger to being in the spotlight. Her marriage to Andrew M. Cuomo in 1990, before being elected governor of New York, was a merger of two of the country’s most famous political families. It took place in the Washington, D.C., church where John F. Kennedy’s funeral took place in 1963, as film crews and photographers waited outside. This union ended in divorce 15 years later, details of the breakup made headlines. She never remarried.
Seven years after the marriage ended, Mrs. Kennedy was arrested and charged with driving under the influence in northern Westchester County, New York. She said she mistakenly took a single sleeping pill before getting into her car. A jury took less than an hour to find her not guilty, but the affair once again fueled his life in the tabloids.
Mrs. Kennedy endured but remained largely out of the public eye – unlike recently.
His heartfelt appeal to Mr. Biden — the timbre of his voice familiar to anyone who watched his father or uncle — contrasts with a series of Instagram posts mocking John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, 31, in which he uses a variety of accents to belittle your cousin as hypocrite and unintelligent.
On social media, Ms. Kennedy’s posts include excerpts of her father’s speeches, odes to human rights leaders such as John Lewis and tributes to her 96-year-old mother. (“Mom is a master class in standing up for the rights of others,” she wrote recently.) Ms. Kennedy said she had not spoken to Mr. Schlossberg about her messages.
Ms. Kennedy now finds herself at the top of what is an unusual moment for a family that prides itself on keeping internal dissent out of the public eye.
“They always learned from the JFK generation that you keep all the bad things that are inside the family inside the family,” said Laurence Leamer, who has written a series of books on Kennedy family. “It ends here.”
But despite all this, the family sought to remain united. “It’s not against Bobby, it’s for Biden,” said Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, an older sister. “We have been for Biden for a long time.”
Kerry Kennedy said she still sees her brother at family events, including at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. “Bobby had been to Cape Town several times last summer,” she said. “We were both in Aspen on vacation and sitting around the lunch table. We text – we have a family text exchange – so there’s some back and forth. But he doesn’t call me to get my opinion.
Christopher Kennedy said he frequently shared concerns with his brother about what he was doing. “People confront me at the grocery store: ‘Why are you letting your brother get away with this?'” he said. “I think we will all be blamed if Bobby causes this outcome.”
“I would say that, like all true believers, he is inaccessible,” he said. “That hardening of the hull has definitely happened.”
Mrs. Kennedy said she was resigned to the fact that her brother had persevered through the election and even suggested that she had come to accept — or at least understand — this last campaign run by a Kennedy.
“At the end of the day, why is he doing this?” she says. “For the same reason I am there. Because we both think the stakes are high.
