WASHINGTON: Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election, a decision that will end one of America’s great political dynasties.
His decision to retire comes less than a year after his father’s death, and his departure will leave Congress without a member of the Kennedy clan for the first time since his uncle, John F. Kennedy, later US president, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946.
Edward Kennedy’s brothers John and Robert, both assassinated, served respectively as president and attorney general in the 1960s.
Kennedy gave no direct reason for his departure but a close aide, Democratic fundraiser Mark Weiner, said his father’s death had taken an enormous toll on him.
“It’s tough to get up and go to work every day when your partner is not there,” Weiner told reporters. “I think he just had a broken heart after his father passed away.”
Kennedy’s official announcement is expected to come Sunday, when a TV advertisement taped by Kennedy is set to air in Rhode Island. In that tape, circulated to some media Thursday night, Kennedy says his “life is taking a new direction, and I will not be a candidate for re-election this year.”
He explains that he wants to continue working to help those with depression, addiction, autism, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“My father taught me that politics at its very core was about serving others,’’ Kennedy says in the video.
Kennedy has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse since crashing his car outside the US Capitol in 2006 but had been comfortably re-elected twice since then, after making mental health care his signature issue in Washington.
“When I made missteps or suffered setbacks, you responded not with contempt, but compassion,” he tells voters in the two-minute video, due to be broadcast on Sunday.
“Thank you for all the times you lifted me up, pushed me forward and filled my heart with hope.”
Kennedy was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1988 at the age of 21, while still a student, and entered Congress six years later.
The boyish redhead was elected to the US House of Representatives and followed the advice of his father to be a workhorse, not a show horse, on Capitol Hill.
He impressed colleagues by learning the names of the other 434 members of the House — an unusual feat in a chamber where few lawmakers, let alone freshmen members, can identify every one of their colleagues.
As well as his work on mental health issues, he is credited with being a star fundraiser for the Democratic Party and reports suggest he would have been well placed for re-election in 2011 had he chosen to stand.
But Kennedy made the news recently when he clashed with Rhode Island Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, who denied him Communion over his support for abortion rights. Kennedy was supporting a health care overhaul with a measure that provided for abortion rights, and criticized the church for opposing the legislation.
