Kennedy’s Credentials Debated in Senate Bid (updated)

[ProSense]

Kennedy’s Credentials Debated in Senate Bid

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Published: December 15, 2008

She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. Yet Caroline Kennedy’s decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012.

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Ms. Kennedy’s work with the city’s public schools has won much attention, but has not been widely understood. Hired in October 2002 (her $1 salary meant she did not have to fill out financial disclosure forms) to overhaul the schools’ private fund-raising, she took on a haphazard operation and gave it a new mission: privately raising seed money to test new reforms, while trying to persuade New Yorkers to get involved in the schools in meaningful ways.

A rock concert in Central Park raised $2 million; a tag sale there drew tens of thousands of bargain hunters. (Some of them, unwittingly, walked off with evening bags that had belonged to her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, according to Ann S. Moore, the chief executive of Time Inc., which sponsored the event.) By the time she left in August 2004, she had raised more than $70 million for an academy to train reform-minded principals. Nearly 200 city school principals are graduates, the majority in high-poverty schools.

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein credited her with bringing in a $51 million gift from Bill Gates’s foundation despite lingering ill will over Mr. Klein’s battles with Microsoft while he was at the Justice Department.

“She’s good in the room, but she’s also good at getting people to focus and come together quickly,” Mr. Klein said. Ms. Kennedy is now vice chairwoman of the schools’ nonprofit fund-raising arm, but she continues to visit schools across the city, with no entourage or press aide.

Indeed, one of the more interesting hurdles Ms. Kennedy faces would be in telling her story to voters, and to interviewers. Like her mother, she has carefully guarded her privacy.

Yet Ms. Kennedy spent about six weeks barnstorming battleground states for Barack Obama and took to it with gusto: An aide recalled her strolling into a Republican headquarters near Ocala, Fla., and peppering voters with questions at every turn.

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Excellent article.

Update:

Caroline reaches out to Hillary

by Mark Murray

Caroline Kennedy has reached out to Hillary Clinton to discuss her interest in the Senate seat, according to a source familiar with the replacement process. While Clinton has not made clear who she supports to fill her seat, sources say that the three Hillary supporters who recently made anti-Caroline remarks were rebuked by Clinton confidantes immediately after they made them. A message from Clinton's team was sent to Clinton fundraiser Robert Zimmerman, RWDSU president Stu Appelbaum, and Rep. Anthony Weiner.

When asked whether Clinton would back a candidate, her spokesman, Philippe Reines, said: "This is entirely Gov. Paterson's decision. Sen. Clinton completely respects the privacy of his process so will not be commenting on it or any individual candidate, nor does any third party speak on her behalf."