Crisis Crosses Camelot’s Moat in Massachusetts

BOSTON — These are the immutable assumptions of life in this commonwealth of Massachusetts: Leaves will drop, snow will fall, the Red Sox will lose and the Kennedys will win.

But last week, as Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II prepared to become the first member of his family to lay claim to Massachusetts’ gold-domed statehouse, the last part of that axiom seemed in jeopardy. From cheating to Chappaquiddick, from drugs to drinking, from rape charges to recklessness, the Kennedys have withstood crises that would have demolished lesser dynasties. Kennedys have been a force in Massachusetts for nigh on a century and have dominated the political landscape since 1946, when John F. Kennedy first became a congressman.

Then, quite by coincidence, young Joe--as Joseph P. Kennedy II, the Democrat who inherited the Brighton congressional seat of former House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill will forever be known--was hit from two sides by a controversy involving his former wife and a scandal surrounding his closest brother.

Political Invincibility Suddenly in Doubt

Just as the 44-year-old six-term congressman was readying what looked like a shoo-in race for governor next year, sympathy over Sheila Rauch Kennedy’s challenge to the congressman’s effort to annul their 12-year marriage caused Kennedy’s popularity to plummet, particularly among women. When tabloid journalists from as far away as Australia jumped on charges by the Boston Globe that 39-year-old Michael Kennedy had conducted a long affair with an underage baby-sitter, the family’s fabled political invincibility was in doubt.

“Until the last week, everyone I know was saying Joe Kennedy could just walk right into the governor’s office,” said Samantha Overton, president of the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus. “But this is kind of a one-two punch all at once. I don’t know if he can get beyond it.”

Right before the scandals, a Boston Globe poll showed the congressman enjoying a 60% favorable rating, against 25% unfavorable. Last week, the poll put his favorable rating at 43% against 39% unfavorable.

And Kennedy has no road map to guide him out of the crisis. If he lashes out at his ex-wife, female voters are likely to retreat in even greater numbers. If he acknowledges his brother’s alleged transgressions, voters will surely question how much he knew--and when.

“There are little stops along the way, and this one might not be such a little one for everybody. But you know, I’m proud of my family,” Kennedy said soon after his brother--and former business partner--was reported to have conducted an intimate five-year relationship with his family’s baby-sitter, beginning when she was 14. “I love my brother very much. I always will, and I think that given the circumstances at the moment, that’s the only comment I really care to make right now.”

The congressman released a terse statement about Sheila Rauch Kennedy’s new book, “Shattered Faith,” chronicling her campaign to stop the Roman Catholic church from erasing a marriage that produced twin sons, now 16. “This is a very personal matter,” it read. “I understand Sheila’s feelings and respect her right to express them.”

‘They Behave Like the . . . House of Windsor’

Kennedy sought the annulment in 1993, when he married his scheduler, Beth Kelly, in a civil ceremony. A tribunal of the Boston archdiocese has granted the annulment; Rauch Kennedy has filed an appeal with the Vatican.

The monarchical notion that the family’s crest--or, in this case, name--might offer some immunity seemed as anachronistic as it was irrelevant. “They behave,” said Christopher Lydon, host of a popular radio call-in show, “like the crumbling House of Windsor.”

For a generation of voters born after 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated and the carefully cultivated legend of Camelot was born, the magic appeared to be fading.

“For those of us who were born after the assassination, I don’t think we have the same perspective or the same investment,” said Kara LaReau, a 25-year-old Boston publicist. “I’m more in touch with the scandals that have been coming out lately than the whole higher mythology.”

But in New York, attorney Theodore Sorensen, a speech writer for John F. Kennedy and a longtime family advisor, said it would be a mistake to consign the family to political history. “It’s a family that is accustomed to both controversy and criticism,” Sorensen said. “Sometimes withstanding it is all you can do--just accept it and go on.”

Media Frenzy Over Baby-Sitter Story

Colored by the traditions of the church, the annulment fight has maintained a lofty moral tone. By contrast, the matter of Michael Kennedy and the baby-sitter has turned into a media feeding frenzy.

The front-page Boston Globe story, based on unidentified sources, recounted a tale that has circulated for more than a year in the affluent seaside community of Cohasset, where Michael Kennedy settled with his wife, Victoria Gifford Kennedy, and their three school-age children. The story charged that Victoria Kennedy, daughter of sportscaster Frank Gifford, found her husband in bed with the baby-sitter two years ago, and that the 16-year marriage collapsed as a consequence.

The baby-sitter, who has not been identified, is said to be a 19-year-old freshman at Boston University, majoring in communications and hoping to be “the next Maria Shriver.” She is said to have broken off the relationship several months ago.

In Cohasset, the joke du jour is that everybody knew something was going on when Michael Kennedy kept showing up with the baby-sitter--but without the kids. Through his powerhouse Boston lawyer, Thomas Dwyer, Kennedy has refused to comment. The baby-sitter’s parents, billionaires from the ambulance business, hired their own heavyweight Boston attorney, Robert Popeo, who also has declined comment.

To the dismay of local authorities, the baby-sitter and her parents have neither filed charges nor agreed to cooperate with the county district attorney’s investigation. In Massachusetts, sex with a minor under the age of 16 is construed as statutory rape. A spokeswoman for the baby-sitter’s family said that the girl is under a psychiatrist’s care, and that an investigation and possible trial would add to her trauma.

Meanwhile, to the amusement and embarrassment of the 6,500 residents of a community, the details mount. Desperate for a photograph, a pair of tabloid journalists allegedly ran Victoria Kennedy off the road and tried to run over her gardener; they were charged with assault. A report in the Boston Herald said that Michael Kennedy, who has admitted seeking help for alcohol dependency, last winter entered an Arizona facility that treats sex addiction. Michael Kennedy, a look-alike for his late father, former Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, was said to have shown up at sports events at the baby-sitter’s prep school and to have taken her on a rafting trip.

Together, Michael and Joe Kennedy started the Citizens Energy Corp., bringing heating oil to low-income residents. Michael served as campaign manager for his Uncle Ted in the intense 1994 Senate race. A year ago, Michael Kennedy’s name was frequently mentioned as a possible congressional candidate, but the family explained that Michael preferred to remain in the political background.

The sense of the family as a monolith was only heightened by disclosures that Kennedy forces helped to engineer a diplomatic appointment for Gov. William F. Weld, the most imposing of Joe Kennedy’s potential Republican opponents. (The GOP lieutenant governor, Paul Celucci, has his own problems, with personal debts of more than $600,000 run up at the racetrack.)

Kennedy’s leading Democratic foe, state Atty. Gen. Scott Harshbarger, countered reports that he was a candidate for a post in the Clinton administration by taking out a “position sought” ad in Monday’s Washington Post. “Want to be Governor of MA effective Jan. 1999,” the ad began. “ . . . New polls show I am strongest Democratic candidate. Anyone trying to get me a job in D.C.--Thanks, but no thanks.--Scott H.”

Richard Goodwin, a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy, predicted that the firestorm will pass. “I think it is damaging, but I think it can be dealt with through accomplishment. It has always rested on that,” he said.

Potentially most harmful, in Goodwin’s view, is “the attitude toward women and feminism, which people tend to read into it. All of it has to do with whether the Kennedys are seen as having a denigrating attitude toward women. They don’t. Not this generation.”

Young Generation Held to Different Standard

Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Eileen McNamara, a Boston Globe columnist who grew up in Joe Kennedy’s home district, disagreed. The current generation of Kennedy men must answer to a different standard than their fathers, uncles or grandfathers, McNamara said. Under those terms, she said, “They are cooked. They are cooked.”

Sipping coffee at her kitchen table in the Boston suburb of West Newton, Nora Zimmerman, an 84-year-old grandmother, seemed to personify the kind of stalwart Democratic voter the Kennedys have long relied on. Zimmerman said she proudly voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960. But the late president’s nephew, she said, will not get her vote for governor.

“I’m sick of all of them,” she scoffed.

The Kennedys, said Maria Krikis, a 35-year-old law student and real estate developer in the blue-collar community of Brockton, “absolutely have preferential treatment in this state. In people’s eyes, they seem to get away with just a little bit more than anybody else.”

But as Goodwin pointed out, American politicians have been overcoming scandals at least since Grover Cleveland fathered an illegitimate child. “It is very rare that these things have hurt beyond the short term,” he observed. The magic of Camelot is in little peril, said Goodwin--with the caveat that “magicians are only as good as their last illusions.”