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Edward Ted Kennedy

March 8, 2012 by · Comments Off on Edward Ted Kennedy 

Edward Ted Kennedy, Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history. For many years the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he was the last surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.; the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination, and Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., killed in action in World War II; and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

Kennedy entered the Senate in a November 1962 special election to fill the seat once held by his brother John. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected seven more times before his death. The controversial Chappaquiddick incident on July 18, 1969, resulted in the death of his automobile passenger Mary Jo Kopechne; Kennedy pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident, and the incident significantly damaged his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. His one attempt, in the 1980 presidential election, resulted in a Democratic primary campaign loss to incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

Kennedy was known for his charisma and oratorical skills. His 1968 eulogy for his brother Robert and his 1980 rallying cry for modern American liberalism were among his best-known speeches. He became recognized as “The Lion of the Senate” through his long tenure and influence. More than 300 bills that Kennedy and his staff wrote were enacted into law. Unabashedly liberal, Kennedy championed an interventionist government emphasizing economic and social justice, but was also known for working with Republicans to find compromises between senators with disparate views. Kennedy played a major role in passing many laws, including laws addressing immigration, cancer research, health insurance, apartheid, disability discrimination, AIDS care, civil rights, mental health benefits, children’s health insurance, education and volunteering. In the 2000s, he led several unsuccessful immigration reform efforts. Over the course of his Senate career and continuing into the Obama administration, Kennedy continued his efforts to enact universal health care, which he called the “cause of my life.”

Scott Brown Senate

March 8, 2012 by · Comments Off on Scott Brown Senate 

Scott Brown Senate, Former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren entered the Massachusetts Senate race to much fanfare late last year, quickly forcing her would-be rivals out of the Democratic primary, and giving incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) reason to sweat.

But the first few months of the campaign have given way to poll numbers that suggest this race will still be one of the key ones to watch in 2012 — and that Brown does indeed have a good shot at re-election.

Brown was elected to the Senate in a special election in January 2010, following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, in a stunning upset against Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley. However, his challenge in 2012 remains that he is a Republican senator in a deep-blue state, which is expected to vote Democratic by a wide margin in the presidential race — for example, a recent Rasmussen poll gave Obama a 55%-38% lead over the state’s former Governor Mitt Romney. So Brown will need a lot of ticket-splitters.

Soon after her campaign rollout, Warren caught up to Brown in early polls, and then overtook with a lead in the fall. But going into the new year, Brown has since overtaken Warren and leads in the polls once again — such as a 9-point lead in a Suffolk poll, and a 5-point lead with Rasmussen.

Scott Brown’s Wife

March 8, 2012 by · Comments Off on Scott Brown’s Wife 

Scott Brown’s Wife, Gail Huff, the journalist who is married to Senator Scott Brown, said she thought the media’s coverage of Sarah Palin has been sexist.

Huff, who moved to a local, Washington D.C. station when Brown became a Senator, has been a journalist for decades. Speaking at the Newseum on Saturday, she lambasted the media coverage of Palin, especially during the 2008 campaign.

“I thought the coverage of her when she was on the ticket was sexist,” Huff said, according to The Hill. “I found it difficult many times to watch. The kind of questions she was asked were very different than the kind of questions McCain was asked.”

Huff said that she thinks the press should refrain from covering Palin so much “unless she decides to be a candidate.” (The frenzy surrounding Palin’s just-released emails show that the media may not be following her advice.)

Wives Of Politicians

March 8, 2012 by · Comments Off on Wives Of Politicians 

Wives Of Politicians, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista , then a congressional aide and now his third wife, while he was married to his second wife.
Political wives have been at the top of the news this week.

There’s Maria Shriver and her husband’s infidelity; Callista Gingrich, the third wife of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; and Cheri Daniels, the politically reluctant spouse of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels who, years ago, divorced her current husband, married another man, then came back.

It’s striking, really, considering it wasn’t so long ago that the private lives of politicians were considered off limits, and even protected by the media.

Not so today. The question is asked every election: What right to privacy does a candidate’s family have – and what’s fair game?

Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, watches as her husband, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, gives his victory speech after being elected senator in 2006.

Jamie Rose/Getty Images
Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, watches as her husband, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, gives his victory speech after being elected senator in 2006.

‘A Mere Appendage’

“There is no definition of ‘fair game,’ ” says Republican political consultant Mary Matalin. “So whatever you think it is, you can disabuse yourself of any of that notion.”

Matalin has worked with some of the most powerful politicians in the country. She says being the wife of a high-profile candidate – along with the accompanying media exposure and the combing through your past – is just awful.

“It’s unfair, it’s irrational, it’s pain that’s relentless,” she says. “And if you can develop a defense for yourself, you can never develop a defense for your loved ones.”

When a nasty campaign hurts the family’s children, says Matalin, even the most steeled political wife breaks down.

There is no definition of ‘fair game.’ So whatever you think it is, you can disabuse yourself of any of that notion.

– Republican political consultant Mary Matalin

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and for the past seven years, the wife of Ohio politician Sherrod Brown.

“I was not prepared for morphing into a mere appendage of my husband’s campaign,” she says.

Schultz campaigned with her husband when he ran for the Senate in 2006. She says young staffers, or even just bystanders at political events, would tell her to cut her hair, wear other clothes or act differently onstage.

Schultz thinks this is, at least in part, plain old-fashioned sexism. “I wanna buy tickets to that show if anyone thinks they’re going to start lining up husbands and telling them how to behave,” she says.

Schultz believes that it’s up to the individual candidate and spouse to set the boundaries of their privacy, and that they should then defend them vigorously. The voracious appetite for private details, she says, doesn’t do anybody any good.

“Marriages are complicated things,” she adds. “The healthiest of marriages are complicated. And yet we want to make them caricatures.”

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