by Jackson, One hot afternoon last month, former Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, Miss Joe Kennedy III, drove across the Mississippi Delta and looked out his window at unending acres of soybeans and cotton. Although he was far from home, he was sort of coming home.
Using an obscenity, he stated that boil-water notices have been sent to residents for the past two years. Every day, we ought to be hammering the drums on this.
Kennedy, 44, was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, former attorney general and presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, who visited the Delta in 1967 and saw the kind of poverty and starvation more commonly found in underdeveloped nations. According to Evan Thomas, a biographer of both the elder Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Bobby was greatly influenced by the pictures he shot of kids with distended stomachs and open wounds.
Kennedy gave the history a nod. I have some knowledge of my grandfather’s trip to the Delta in the 1960s, and he told me how seeing this in the wealthiest nation on earth upset and changed him. My family has dedicated many of their years in politics to fighting for these individuals, and I’m proud of that.
Kennedy’s goal is to carry on the tradition of an American political dynasty that has lost some of its liberal appeal in recent years. He is incensed that a prominent member of an administration that is subverting his family’s fundamental beliefs is his uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services.
According to the younger Kennedy, the health secretary has defended Medicaid beneficiaries’ unworkable job requirements. They are only successful in denying Medicaid to those who are in need of it.
His nephew mockingly retorted, “It’s not the dyes that are making people obese,” in response to the elder Kennedy’s attempts to outlaw food coloring.
Nevertheless, he agrees with his uncle that Democrats are becoming more and more enslaved to the metropolitan elite. He looked out at the Delta scenery and remarked, “I believe the Democratic Party has lost touch with this reality.”
Kennedy’s answer is that, at least not yet, he will not run for president as his grandfather did and his uncle may.
Rather, he founded the charity Groundwork Project, which aims to build a network of grassroots resistance in four deeply red states—Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, and West Virginia—that haven’t gotten much attention from left-leaning groups. Kennedy claimed that those states have turned into safe havens for right-wing policies with little to no opposition. Examples include West Virginia’s repeal of the Clean Air Act and Mississippi’s law that outlawed abortions after 15 weeks, which resulted in the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Kennedy stated that organizing people is the only way to alter the power dynamics in those states. It’s not a quick remedy. What else can you do, though?
The gradual process of establishing an organization in hostile territory, as Kennedy anticipates, has been accomplished in the past, primarily by conservative organizations such as Americans for Prosperity, which was established in 2004, has operations in 35 states, and spends over $186 million annually. The Groundwork Project, on the other hand, runs on a comparatively small annual budget of $2.8 million, with a large portion of that amount going to roughly 40 local organizations that have faced difficult challenges in fields like reproductive rights and environmental justice through $25,000 grants each year.
However, the well-known name is helpful. Locals occasionally referred to Groundwork Project’s founder as a Kennedy in awe while visiting Mississippi for three days to see the initiatives it is supporting. Kennedy utilized his heritage to address the topic of health care during a meeting with local politicians at a Yazoo City cafe. He stated, “My family has focused on this for a long time.”
Kennedy explicitly mentioned another cousin in the following sentence: My uncle is currently a part of an administration that is reducing Medicaid.
The centrist Democratic group Third Way’s executive vice president for policy, Jim Kessler, made conjectures on the political undertones of Kennedy’s attacks on his uncle.
According to Kessler, it is almost a given that Bobby Jr. will run for president in 2028 as a Republican. Reclaiming the family legacy may be a part of the younger Kennedy’s efforts to remind people of who they truly are.
The oral history of family lore
Kennedy had not even been born when an assassin’s gunshot in California in June 1968 ended Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The 42-year-old candidate left behind his wife, Ethel, and their eleven children, including Joseph, the father of Joe Kennedy III, who would later serve in Congress from 1987 to 1999, and Robert Jr.
Kennedy claimed that because he was up surrounded by family lore and oral history, he has never read a book on his grandfather. RFK’s sayings, including “The gross national product can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans,” were ingrained in him.
His own path was the well-planned Kennedy route, which combined political ambition with public service. He grew up in Boston, went to Stanford University, and then volunteered for the Peace Corps for two years in the Dominican Republic. After graduating from Harvard Law School and returning home to Massachusetts, he served as Middlesex County’s associate district attorney.
When he declared in February 2012 that he wanted to fill the congressional seat that Rep. Barney Frank was about to relinquish, it was not shocking. Kennedy, a sincere and vivacious 31-year-old scion who broke from the family’s physical template and had a toothy smile, wavy red hair, and an aquiline nose that was genetically unique, coasted to victory with little resistance.
Numerous House colleagues were won over by the newcomer; in interviews, a number of them stated that they had been expecting an entitled brat but were instead met with a considerate and modest person. Like his cousin Patrick Kennedy, who retired from Congress in 2011, he set out to take the lead on mental health concerns. Kennedy, however, said, “Even in the majority, I couldn’t move my own bills,” and expressed his disappointment with the chamber’s partisan splits and unexplained sluggishness.
Kennedy’s restlessness had overcome him by his fourth term. Three Kennedy icons—his grandfather, his great-uncle, the former president, and his great-uncle Ted—had served in the Senate before he declared his intention to run in September 2019. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and the minority leader at the time, backed him.
Sen. Edward J. Markey, a 73-year-old Democrat incumbent, outwitted his younger rival, however, by redefining himself as a rabble-rousing progressive, much like New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who supported Markey. Kennedy, who typically speaks in well-written paragraphs, found it difficult to come up with a catchy message for voters.
Kennedy became the first member of his family to lose a Senate race, and Markey won the September 2020 primary by 11 points. Pelosi firmly supported the loss, while President Donald Trump boasted on Twitter!
For a Kennedy, being rejected and derided by liberal activists was a new experience, and he reflected on his alternatives for the rest of 2020.
“It’s awful to lose,” Kennedy added. However, I decided to try to create something that will keep you motivated and involved. And you might take advantage of it if it presents itself, but you’re not just waiting for it to happen.
You Democrats think we don t know how to work?
Rejected by progressive activists, Kennedy turned to forgotten agrarian lands like the Mississippi Delta, which has only one major city (Jackson), and is therefore difficult to organize. It s what I call a hard-to-fight state, said Charles Taylor, the executive director of Mississippi s NAACP chapter.
Similar impediments exist in Oklahoma, where Republican legislators have passed severe restrictions on abortion and on what can be taught in public school classrooms about racism.
Alabama, a third Groundwork Project state, benefits from a more urban population than Oklahoma or Mississippi. But Democratic get-out-the-vote organizers have been reluctant to operate in a state where there is no in-person early voting and where absentee ballots must be signed by a notary or two voting-age witnesses.
West Virginia is by far the most challenging for Kennedy. Its overwhelmingly rural and white population was long Democratic, but the collapse of the coal and steel industries in the state have spawned a profound distrust of party elites, Kennedy said. He recalled a visit to West Virginia just after he founded the Groundwork Project, when a bearded young man asked him, How come you Democrats think we don t know how to work?
To every such question, Kennedy s implicit answer was to organize. I think Mississippi has so much to teach our nation about resilience, never losing focus and not giving up when your government is actively working against you, he said at an event in Indianola.
Kennedy is applying the same calm resolve to his own political future. He and his wife, Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, an attorney and children s advocate, have a 6-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Kennedy laments having missed so much of their infancy while serving in Washington.
The question is, is what I would get out of going back into elective office worth the sacrifice that I asked my family to go through again?
For now, Kennedy is content to leave the question unanswered. I m 44, he said. And at some point down the road, I wouldn t necessarily rule anything out.
This article originally appeared inThe New York Times.
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