True Compass (48 page)

The Senate was in session for most of August that year, so I didn't have the month to hit the ground as usual. I was chairman of the committee that was churning out much of the important legislation, and I didn't want to be absent. I believed that my constituents would be pleased that I was doing the people's business, but the truth was that they were being bombarded with advertisements from the Republican Senate primary essentially aimed at me, and, other than weekends, I wasn't there to counteract the impact. So the local officials and the revitalized organization and surrogates were more important than ever that summer.

Vicki would come back from the campaign trail and regale me with tales of her adventures. She loved campaigning, and, as she said to me, she loved most of all sharing the stories with me at the end of the day. At a popular restaurant in Boston, where you had to shout to be heard above the din of the crowd, a campaign worker asked a woman diner, "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO MEET MRS. TED KENNEDY?" The woman looked up and said, without missing a beat, "NOT AS PRETTY AS THE FIRST ONE!" Vicki smiled and said, "THANK YOU SO MUCH! I HOPE YOU'LL SUPPORT MY HUSBAND!" Vicki loved that story and used it to tease me to no end about the sacrifices she made for me. And then she would dissolve into laughter. Yes, I love this woman. She told me about a man at another table who replied to her greeting with, "KENNEDY! I WOULDN'T VOTE FOR HIM IF YOU PAID ME TO!" Then he remembered his manners. "BUT IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU, MA'AM!"

In Worcester a few days later, a fellow deflected her "I hope you'll support my husband" greeting with the off-center retort, "I only support people who are French." "Ah," Vicki said. "Then you'll want to support my husband, Ted Ken-a-
day
!" They both started laughing. She believes she won him over with that one.

When I was able to be there, I had my own interesting encounters that were a bit different from previous campaigns. The tenor of some of the questions fired at me at events left no doubt that the electorate was angry. People were hurting.

But there were still the fun times: singing Irish songs in senior centers; eating food at the ethnic festivals; walking in the parades. Those are the things that bring you close to the people and make politics fun. They're a long way from the more modern campaign staples of television advertising and the Internet, but they're every bit as important, at least for me. I wouldn't trade the people part of politics for anything in the world.

The Senate finally recessed on October 8, and I was able to be in Massachusetts full-time. Vicki's mother, Doris, basically relocated to our home in Virginia to help look after the children. Curran was eleven and Caroline was eight, and the separation was especially hard on them and on Vicki. But having Doris there helped ease the burden. We began to feel momentum as I was able to get around the state. As one state rep put it, "People just want to see your shoe leather hit the pavement." And hit the pavement we did.

I gained some impressive backup. My nephew John Kennedy, accompanied by his large German shepherd, Sam, joined the campaign and brought crowds to their feet with his infectious charm and witty but impassioned message. Another nephew, Chris Lawford, then playing a heartthrob in a popular daytime soap opera, created quite a stir wherever he went. Other nieces and nephews, and of course our own children, hit the trail. The actor Alec Baldwin went to college campuses to register new voters. President Clinton and Hillary came to the state to stump for me. Both were enormously popular and great assets.

Meanwhile, we were matching Mitt Romney's sizable treasure chest with resources of our own, eventually spending upwards of $10 million. I mortgaged my house as part of the effort so I could spend more time campaigning and less time fund-raising in those important last weeks. That meant we would have an aggressive fund-raising schedule to retire debt after the election, but that was fine with me. It was money well and wisely spent: much of it supported the political TV spots created by Bob Shrum and his team.

Bob's and Vicki's intuition about probing Romney's corporate behavior proved brilliantly on target. It led to the most effective "negative" ad that we ran. The ad went directly to Romney's claim that he had created ten thousand jobs. From there, it went to the single word, "Ampad," which came to define his true record as a businessman.

Our campaign had received a call from a union representative, telling us about the takeover of an Indiana company by Ampad, Romney's Bain Capital subsidiary, and Ampad's subsequent firing or slashing of salary and benefits of most of the workers. Shrum's partner Tad Devine went out to Indiana to film the workers, and he threw away the script and just let them tell their stories. My dad always said that there's no substitute for sincerity, and these people, working people who were losing their health insurance and their jobs, spoke from the heart. One especially effective ad ended with a middle-aged female worker looking directly into the camera, saying, "I'd like to say to the people of Massachusetts, if you think it can't happen to you, think again, because we thought it couldn't happen here either."

Our first televised debate at Faneuil Hall was in the final week of October. With Romney's poll lead decreasing and the truth of his job creation record in deep question, Mitt had realigned himself a little. He'd moved away from his "businessman" strategy and begun to campaign almost as a liberal reformer. I had begun to joke at rallies that I had heard of flip and I had heard of flop. But with Mitt, it was flip-flop-flip. He'd changed positions so often that if we gave him a little more time he'd be voting for
me
on election day. Yes, I was having fun.

Still, I knew that a lot was riding on the outcome of the debate in Faneuil Hall. Romney was slipping, but things remained close. I was taking nothing for granted. This was a change year. People all over the country were itching for change, and Massachusetts was no exception. Term limits were in vogue. Mitt had talked about thanking me for my service and sending me home to Cape Cod to retire. He was young and slender and I was not. Would his message resonate in a face-to-face meeting? We were about to find out.

When the day arrived, Vicki and I went to the Kennedy Library and sat outside in the back. We ate sandwiches, and I pored over my briefing materials. We went back to our apartment, and I took a nap so I'd be at peak energy for the intensity of the give-and-take. By evening I was prepared, but nervous.

During the drive to Faneuil Hall, Dave Burke perceived that I was a little tense, and did his best to lighten me up. Dave is great--a superb mind, a loyal aide and friend over the decades, and a fellow who knows the value of laughter. From the time we got in the car, Dave and Vicki made fast patter to keep the mood light. Dave grilled us about the most important thing we had learned in the campaign, then provided the answer himself: that the Roy Rogers on the Mass Pike didn't serve fried chicken until 11 a.m. We laughed so much at that one, as it conjured up memories of long days crisscrossing the state and craving that chicken before the appointed hour. As we neared the hall, Dave tapped me on the shoulder: "I just want to know why Steve Breyer is sitting on the Supreme Court," he asked in mock seriousness, "and I'm sitting in this damn car with you."

I laughed and relaxed even more. But then I looked out of the window, and any remaining nervousness vanished. I saw a huge swell of people stretching for blocks. They carried Kennedy signs and chanted, "Teddy! Teddy! Teddy!" It was like the old torchlight parades that Grampa used to tell me about, and that he loved so much. I rolled down the car window, leaned out, raised my arm, and pumped my fist. My adrenaline was flowing. These were my people. They were working people. They were the people I had been representing for thirty-two years, and we still had work to do.

As I stepped out of the car, onto the cobblestone street and into Faneuil Hall, I couldn't help but think of the history of the place: from meetings to plan the Revolutionary War to my brother Jack's last campaign speech in 1960 to more modern gatherings. This building, the Cradle of Liberty, was at the center of it all.

As Mitt and I took the stage, I noticed two exceptionally large podiums. For some reason, unlike every other election, I had been unable to lose weight this time, and I was at an all-time high. As I found out later, my dear friend Eddy Martin got into the hall and swapped the smaller podiums for two larger ones, masking my size and totally dwarfing poor Mitt. Eddy never told me what he did, and it was only years later, at the time of his death, that I learned the true story.

I remember the first question I was asked in the debate: "Why is this race even close?" My first thought was,
Good question. I'm wondering the same thing!
My next thought was,
I'd better start talking and hope I think of something pretty soon
. So I started talking and was relieved when my time was up.

Both Mitt and I were prepared. Both of us kept our composure, and both of us remained hyper-alert for an opening, any opening. I saw one when Mitt gave a long-winded, nuanced answer about supposedly being pro-choice (unlike his professed anti-choice stance as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008). I paused for a beat and said, "I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice." The crowd laughed.

No one laughed, however, least of all me, when I was asked about how I coped with my personal failings. There it was. The unspoken was spoken. My personal life was on the table. And unlike other questions and answers that I had reviewed with my advisers during debate prep, this was an area that we did not cover. This one was all mine. I had thought about it, to be sure. I knew what I felt inside. But to have to say it in public was my challenge.

I decided to place my trust in the simple, unadorned truth. I paused a moment, and then began: "Every day of my life I try to be a better human being, a better father, a better son, a better husband. And since my life has changed with Vicki, I believe the people of this state understand that the kind of purpose and direction and new affection and confidence on personal matters has been enormously reinvigorating. And hopefully I am a better senator."

And then they asked Mitt Romney, and his unfortunate tone-deafness became evident to everyone. After making an ineffective attempt at humor--"I assume you mean
my
weakness"--he started to talk about how much he loved to volunteer and how his life had been about being able to give service to others. He went on in that way for so long that the moderator felt compelled to remind him that he was asked about his greatest
weakness
.

By the end of the evening, after I tried to pin Romney down on the specific costs of his health care proposals; after he became exasperated with me for asking for specifics and I shot back, "That's what you have to do as a legislator, Mr. Romney"; after he complained about my ads and I told him that we could discuss that after the debate because people were hurting and they wanted to hear about issues that affected their lives, I started to feel that things were going okay for me. And you could feel in the room that the crowd was feeling that way too.

My nephew Congressman Joe Kennedy told me that the next day people were crossing the street to shake his hand, congratulating him on the great debate. But, he said, he really knew we'd done well when they put their arm around his shoulders and whispered in his ear, "I've been with your uncle the whole time."

On election day, I won by a margin of 58 percent to Romney's 41 percent.

The next morning, Vicki and I woke up early to meet commuters coming in to Park Street Station in Boston. We just wanted to say thank you. The results around the country had not been so positive. Close friends and colleagues of mine had lost their seats in a Republican tsunami. But thanks to the people of Massachusetts, I was going back to Washington.

A lot of people have asked me since then whether the Romney race was my most difficult. It wasn't. It was competitive, clearly the most competitive since Eddie McCormack. But it wasn't
difficult
because I knew where I stood. I knew what I believed. I knew what I needed to do. And I was determined to do what I needed to do in terms of the hard campaigning, but not to trim down my positions and beliefs, even if they seemed out of favor that year. At the end of the day, I was running to do something I cared about that would make a difference in people's lives, not just to hold an office. And I was sharing the campaign with Vicki, the love of my life and my soul mate.

I also felt that I benefited from the good memories that many people in the state, particularly in Boston, still had of Grampa Fitzgerald and my mother. Both Grampa and my mother loved the personal side of politics, and their connections to the people ran deep. In 1994, my 104-year-old mother was still a presence, if not in the public square anymore, certainly in the public's heart. At the same time, the people of my state revered the memory of President Kennedy, their native son, and they remembered Bobby. I recognized that I stood on the shoulders of all of them, and that I had benefited from the goodwill that they enjoyed.

We had a joyful Thanksgiving celebration that year. As always, we gathered at our home in Hyannis Port. We had two wonderful new additions at the Thanksgiving table that year: Kiley Elizabeth Kennedy, the three-month-old daughter of my son Teddy and his wife, Kiki; and Grace Kennedy Allen, the two-month-old daughter of my daughter Kara and her husband, Michael. Joined by my mother, we were four generations of Kennedys gathered around the dinner table in the home that has always been such a refuge for me. I was a very happy man.

The next evening, the celebration continued, and in addition to our children, we were joined for dinner by Vicki's parents, Paul and Gail Kirk, and Eddy and Marge Martin. Vicki had prepared her usual post-Thanksgiving fare--turkey gumbo, in honor of her Louisiana roots, and turkey tetrazzini, which was a favorite of Michael Allen's--and wine was flowing as everyone was toasting me and congratulating me on the win. I don't like attention directed to me in that way, as loving as it was, so I stood up and began, "Well, this victory really isn't about me. It's about my family, and it's about the people of Massachusetts and their residual goodwill that goes all the way back to Grampa's day--"