MB Civic

Rep. Kennedy, promising at 21, now moves to save career

By Susan Milligan | May 7, 2006 | The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON — Just five weeks before the car crash that upended his life and career, Patrick J. Kennedy took to the House floor.

The quiet-mannered Rhode Island congressman rarely gives fiery speeches, but the issue of helping young people with bipolar disorder sent him into an impassioned state, as he recounted the tale of a young woman who tried to kill herself before getting the treatment she needed for depression.

”This is an area of national need,” the often-shy Kennedy said pleadingly during floor debate March 30, urging his colleagues to approve an amendment meant to increase the number of mental health specialists for children. ”There is no higher need than the need for urgent mental healthcare for our children and adolescents.”

On Friday, it was the six-term congressman himself who announced he was checking into a drug rehabilitation clinic for treatment, a solemn new low point for a man who once showed great political promise even with an admitted past of drug addiction and an ongoing struggle with depression.

The trip to the Mayo Clinic was Kennedy’s second in less than five months. He went there at Christmas and said he returned to Congress ”reinvigorated and healthy.”

Kennedy’s return to rehab after a car accident under shadowy circumstances seemed to some political analysts to be a benchmark — the moment even some supporters wondered whether he would ever fully outrun his demons. It was also a moment when Kennedy, chastened, acknowledged that even he had misjudged the extent of his problems, which he described as ranging from binge drinking to misuse of prescription medicines.

Analysts say Rhode Islanders are likely to reelect Kennedy, who has won the loyalty of constituents by bringing federal dollars home to the nation’s smallest state. But Kennedy — the child of a senator and presidential candidate, and the nephew of a president and a US attorney general — seems to be destined to move no higher than the US House, said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University and author of a biography of Patrick Kennedy.

”I don’t really see this as threatening his political career. The Republicans are going to have to come up with someone much better,” West said. But ”there’s really no other place for him to go other than to stay in the House and build up seniority.”

The 38-year-old congressman has fallen off the political fast track he entered in 1988, when he won a seat in the Rhode Island State House at the age of 21 in a district where locals still hung pictures of his slain uncle, former president John F. Kennedy, alongside those of the pope. A self-effacing manner helped him make allies in the Legislature, and four years later, he became chairman of the Rules Committee.

In 1994, Kennedy was elected to the US House of Representatives, and at just 27 years of age, the boyish-looking Kennedy threw himself into the job, following the advice of his father, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to be a workhorse, not a show horse.

The younger Kennedy impressed colleagues by carefully studying the congressional facebook and learning the names of the 434 other members of the House — unusual in a chamber where few lawmakers, let alone freshmen, can identify every one of their colleagues.

Kennedy soon became close to former House minority leader Richard A. Gephardt, and the Missouri Democrat took the young Kennedy under his wing, guiding him and appointing him chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — one of the few leadership positions achieved by appointment, not election — and a job that is both exhausting and potentially rewarded with the loyalties of congressmen aided by the committee.

”He did everything you wanted a chairman to do, and because of his family name, he had tremendous entrée around the country,” said Steve Elmendorf, former chief of staff to Gephardt.

Under his stewardship, Kennedy raised about $100 million for the DCCC — nearly three times what it drew in the previous cycle, using the Kennedy name to draw donors to fund-raisers. The Democrats picked up two House seats in 2000, a year when Republicans captured the presidency in a protracted election. Gephardt asked Kennedy to stay on for another term as chairman, former staff members say, but Kennedy declined, instead asking for a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, which he still holds.

But the rigors of having run the DCCC operation — coming after decades of the strain of living in the spotlight constantly shined onto the Kennedy clan — seemed to take a toll on Kennedy, whom colleagues describe as lacking the emotional fortitude and resilience of his father.

There was what former DCCC aide Erik Smith refers to as ”the airport episode,” when a clearly frustrated Kennedy was videotaped in 2000 shoving a female security guard. The guard sued, and Kennedy paid a settlement. The usually popular Kennedy also began to lose support in polls, with constituents grumbling that he was spending too much time on the road on behalf of other districts and not enough time in his own. ”It’s a hard job. The travel gets to you. Begging people for money all day gets to you,” Elmendorf said.

One House colleague said that Kennedy had not been the same since taking on the tough job of trying, unsuccessfully, to win the House back for the Democrats and that the stress of the effort may have led to his behavior at the airport. He later apologized.

Meanwhile, the congressman suffered another mishap. The same year, Kennedy allegedly caused $28,000 in damage to a charter yacht off the coast of Connecticut, and the Coast Guard was summoned to collect a female companion who was on the boat and who had reportedly argued with Kennedy. His office at the time said the episode was overblown.

It was earlier in 2000 that Kennedy acknowledged his battle with depression, which he sometimes described as bipolar disorder, and his use of medication to treat it. He had talked about his struggles with drug addiction, which started with cocaine abuse as a teenager and landed him in rehab. During his college years, he had surgery to remove a tumor from his spine, which led to an addiction to painkillers.

The pressures of being a Kennedy — along with the scandals and tragedies the family has faced — have amplified his challenges, West said.

Kennedy’s birth on July 14, 1967, was a Page 1 news story in the Globe. He was just 2 when his father was involved in the Chappaquiddick car accident in 1969 that killed a young woman. His mother, Joan, has been in a debilitating, decades-long battle with alcoholism, and Kennedy and his siblings went to court last year to assume some control over her finances. Both Kennedy’s mother and his sister Kara have battled cancer in recent years.

Last week, in an interview with The Providence Journal, Kennedy said he had falsely taken comfort in the idea that his alcoholism was different from his mother’s — that he was a binge-drinker who remained functional when not intoxicated, while she was a ”maintenance” drinker who felt the need for alcohol all the time.

Kennedy told the Journal that he had ”a lot of denial because the manifestation of our illness is different, but just because it’s different doesn’t mean mine isn’t as bad as hers.”

On top of dealing with his mother’s legacy of alcoholism, Kennedy competes with the memories of his uncles and the living legend of his powerful father.

”I think Patrick has had a difficult act to follow, in his father, as well as John [F. Kennedy] and Robert” F. Kennedy, West said. ”It’s always been difficult for him to feel like he can measure up.”

Patrick Kennedy passed up opportunities to run for the Senate, and appeared to settle into being a long-term member of the House, where he has focused on gun control, mental health, and substance abuse. Ironically, the first piece of Kennedy-sponsored legislation that surfaces on a search of the Library of Congress’s official legislative website is an amendment highlighting National Drug Court Month.

In the House, Kennedy is known as friendly and unpretentious, lacking the fire of his father but defended vigorously by those who work with him on issues. ”He’s such a decent and earnest and helpful ally. I can’t say enough about him,” said Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. And while Kennedy is not known as a star in the chamber — a 2004 survey of congressional staff members by Washingtonian magazine had Kennedy tied with four others as ”No Rocket Scientist” — the Rhode Island lawmaker is well liked by his colleagues.

Kennedy is no longer a 20-something freshman, but his colleagues take a protective, almost fatherly tone, when discussing him, and are clearly worried about the health of the congressman. ”Any way you slice it, he’s a good kid. Everybody admires the way he handled his problems with his mother,” said one Democratic House member.

Rhode Island Republicans accuse Kennedy of being an ineffective legislator, but concede he is a tough candidate to beat in the heavily Democratic district. ”What is the fallout going to be? Are people not going to vote for someone because he was in a car accident? No one knows,” said Chuck Newton, spokesman for the Rhode Island Republican Party.

But even his loyal Democratic colleagues, who insist he has shown no signs of disorientation at work, expressed alarm over Kennedy’s car crash at 3 a.m. Thursday morning — especially because Kennedy says he was so disoriented by prescription drugs he has no memory of it.

”I don’t believe he was drinking [when Kennedy crashed his car into a barrier early Thursday morning] but the memory lapse is a warning signal, and he’s decided to do something about it,” said Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy. ”When warning signals such as that come up in one’s life, to be able to recognize it and address it is a great example for others. I think people can relate really well to Patrick.”