Another Kennedy Politico

When she was an eight-year-old girl in 1960, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend '73 licked envelopes and stood in reception lines for the presidential campaign of her uncle, John F. Kennedy '40.

More than twenty years later with Harvard College, Yale Law School and extended periods of public interest work under her belt Townsend is still in politics. And she is still working for an uncle.

Now director of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy D-Mass, 54's re-election campaign, Townsend seems to fit perfectly the liberal activist image of the Kennedy family as epitomized by her two uncles and her father the late Robert F. Kennedy '48.

"I feel part of that tradition," she says during a hectic 45 minutes interview at Kennedy election headquarters. "I haven't rebelled against it."

Townsend is carrying on the tradition in a race most political observers believe is a shoo in for Massachusetts senior senator. In the 1976 race, Kennedy clobbered all opposition winning more than two thirds of the vote. His current Republican opponent Raymond Shamie is a little Known Walpole businessman.

But Townsend is taking no chances. New Right political action committees (PACs) have targeted Kennedy for defeat this year as they did many liberal senators in the 1980 elections. The PACs have spent large amounts of money on negative advertising including the mass distribution of a comic book ridiculing Kennedy's character.

The Kennedy team has countered with a media blitz of its own emphasizing the senator's resilience in overcoming personal tragedy.

But what seems particularly important to Townsend besides actually winning the elections is building up grass roots support for several causes most notably the push for a freeze on nuclear arms production.

As Kennedy campaign director. Townsend is coordinating an extensive effort aimed at informing and organizing students and others around the state in support of what she called the "moral issue" of the freeze. This effort includes a scheduled rally at Boston University featuring the senator and several popular musicians.

"One understands with the freeze that we are mutually dependent," she said determinedly. "If the Russians survive, we survive."

The freeze and the latest Kennedy Campaign are only the most recent political causes taken up by this thin high strung backer of idealistic causes. Besides working on John Kennedy's campaign Townsend was part of George McGovern's aborted presidential bid in 1972 and was environmental affairs coordinator for her uncle's 1980 try.

In addition, she has worked on a wide variety of public interest issues from helping out on an Indian reservation to living with Eskimoes in Alaska to working with the mentally retarded.

Beyond the current campaign, Townsend refuses to speculate on future plans either her own political ambitions or a possible 1984 Presidential bid by her uncle. For now she says all she's looking forward to is a "little vacation.