Those Kennedys...

When 30-year-old Edward Moore Kennedy '54-'56 (D-Mass.) was nominated in 1962 to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by his brother, President John F. Kennedy '40, his opponent charged that the young candidate was merely living off of his name, saying that "if your name was Edward Moore, your candidacy would be a joke."

Kennedy went on to win that election with the help of his name, and what proved successful in 1962 is still successful today. No family has so singularly dominated the American political scene and been so successful in electoral politics for as long as the Kennedys.

According to political observers it's almost impossible to defeat a Kennedy in an election. But Joseph Malone '78 and Glenn Fiscus are shunning conventional wisdom in their attempts to do what many consider impossible--unseat an incumbent Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Tomorrow, Malone, a business executive from Waltham, will try to stop Edward Kennedy's re-election to his Senate seat for a sixth term, and Fiscus, an engineer originally from Pittsburgh, Pa., will challenge U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.), who is defending for the first time Massachusetts' Eighth District congressional seat, which he won in 1986.

Although polls show both Kennedys are likely to be re-elected, their opponents are still confident.

"All elections are tough," Fiscus said. "I knew going in that incumbents get re-elected 99 times to one. In order to be elected, you have get to the people and talk to them. If I got to every voter I'd win hands-down. In the past six months I've probably shaken about 15,000 hands."

"Popularity and name recognition are two very different things," according to Ellen Wilkins, a spokesperson for Malone's campaign. "In a race with Ted Kennedy, 40 percent of the people know him and like him, 40 percent know him and dislike him. The key is winning the hearts and minds of the other 20 percent."

If Fiscus and Malone lose to the Kennedys, they will join a very long list of also-rans.

Joseph Kennedy Sr., who served as ambassador to the Court of St. James, urged his children to enter politics. They did, producing one President, one U.S. Attorney General, three U.S. Senators and a U.S. Representative. A third generation of the Kennedy clan is just getting started in electoral politics, but has already yielded a member of Congress and a state representative.

The familiarity of the Kennedy name and the warm memories of President Kennedy and his brother, presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy '48 (D-N.Y.), translate into votes and make it almost impossible to defeat a Kennedy in an election, according to political observers.

"I can't quantify how many votes the name recognition got for [Joe] Kennedy, but I know that he had immediate name recognition," said Tom Gallagher, who dropped out of the Eighth District race in June 1986. "The first name really matter. Having the [Kennedy] just snowballs."

"Any Kennedy who runs begins with a tremendous reservoir of respect and affection with a large number of voters," said James Roosevelt Jr., who also lost to Kennedy that year.

"The memories that people have of John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy have created an aura of good feeling for anyone with that name. The memory has become more institutionalized in that it now applies across the board to any member of the family."

Roosevelt attempted to use the familiarity of his own name in the 1986 race, but found the Kennedy name outweighed even a name shared by two U.S. Presidents.

"First of all, the Kennedy family much more directly has ties to Massachusetts and New England," Roosevelt said. "And secondly, many more people are alive who have had first-hand experiences with John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy."

When campaigning, the Kennedy's do not generally refer to the assassinations of the two brothers at the heights of their political careers. But the memories are quite powerful when they are called up.

In a 1986 debate between Joe and his main opponent, then-State Sen. George Bachrach (D-Watertown), Bachrach accused Kennedy of allowing his non-profit Citizens Energy organization to deal with Libya to purchase oil.

Political observers note that Kennedy helped clinch his victory by responding that Libya had offered asylum to Sirhan Sirhan after he had assassinated his father, and that any accusations that Kennedy had dealt with Libya were off base. While Bachrach was approaching a tie with Kennedy before the debate, polls shortly afterwards gave Kennedy a lead of more than 10 points.

And Ted Kennedy is not above summoning the tragedies of the past to help him. In a televised debate two weeks ago, Malone tried to label the liberal Senator's position on crime too generous for criminals and too unsympathetic for victims. Kennedy responded, "no one has to tell me the effect of violence on a family"--thereby defusing the issue for the rest of the debate.

But name recognition and the memories of the Camelot years aren't the only advantages for a Kennedy who wants to enter politics. Money is also important, and the Kennedys have it. Each member of the third generation is estimated to have between $300,000 and $1 million in personal capital, with much more in the future expected from inheritances and endowments.

"They're rich and famous," Gallagher said. "That's where the family starts from. Try to figure out how John Kennedy was first elected to the Senate, and you'll see that he was working with his father's millions."

"You're running with a money gun at your head," said a spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Helen D. Bentley (R-Md.), who in 1986 successfully defended her seat against a challenge from Kathleen Kennedy Town-send '73-'74, daughter of Robert Kennedy.

"It was a very expensive campaign. Both sides spent over $1 million. You get a name like that running against you and you say, 'Oh, God, we have to raise a lot of money.'"

In 1986, Townsend had the money, the familial support and the name recognition in her bid for Congress against a first-term incumbent. But she lost to Bentley, garnering only 41 percent of the vote, despite efforts to exploit her name.

"I'm not sure that there aren't other cities where she could have won," said the Bentley spokesperson who is a Baltimore resident. "Baltimore people are local people. It's kind of insular in that way. And it's tough for an outsider to come in here and be automatically accepted."

The spokesperson for Bentley added, "You don't get that `stop the world--a Kennedy's coming by,' reaction here."

The financial advantage of the Kennedys is only compounded when they are incumbents. Ted Kennedy's opponents say the Senator has no trouble raising money from a wide variety of sources.

"Senator Kennedy's been raising money for six years and he started with about $10 million in the bank," Wilkins said. "Forty percent of his donations have come from PACs," she said, referring to political action committees for specific interests.

In his race against Joe Kennedy, Fiscus minimizes the importance of campaign money, saying "It doesn't cost much to go to someone's door and talk to them." But he has spent $5000 on the campaign, and only half of that comes from private donations.

Malone has been more successful. According to Wilkins, by tomorrow the campaign will have received around $1 million in private donations, 90 percent from inside the state. Malone does take any money from political action committees.

"It's not tough to raise money for a race against Ted Kennedy in the ways youmight think," Wilkins said. "The 40 percent of thepeople who can't stand him feel very stronglyabout it and they're willing to pay money tosupport someone else."

Political observers point to another sign thatthe shining Kennedy mantle may be dimming withtime--the failed bid of Ted Kennedy for Presidentin 1980. Early polls showed Kennedy far ahead ofPresident Jimmy Carter, but that edge dissipatedover the campaign.

"They're obviously not unbeatable because ofwhat happened in Maryland and because Ted couldn'twin the presidential nomination," said MITprofessor and Rainbow Coalition activist Mel King,who finished third in the 1986 race against JoeKennedy. "The name recognition helps, but it's nota guarantee of success."

Edward Kennedy Jr. and his sister Kara are nowco-chairs of their father's re-election campaign,following in the footsteps of Joe in 1976 andKathleen Townsend in 1982. In addition to havingfamily members work in the campaign organization,the Kennedys encourage their relatives to makecampaign appearances, which attract a lot ofpublicity.

For a long time, publicity about the thirdgeneration of Kennedys focused on their troubles.Some political observers said that the family wasjinxed, pointing to inci-A-1