and the party at the time. I remember it quite well, and part of the controversy had to do with claims that aspects of the accident had been covered up to protect the Kennedys. The incident definitely threw a monkey wrench in Ted's presidential aspirations.
After the accident he announced that he wouldn’t run for president in 1972, as many supporters had been hoping he would before Chappaquiddick. The fallout from the accident (and lingering rumors of a cover-up) permanently doomed Kennedy’s presidential ambitions: In 1980, when he finally did seek the Democratic presidential nomination, he suffered an embarrassing defeat to the unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter.
Kennedy would serve Massachusetts in the Senate for three more decades, and would become one of the nation’s most respected elder statesmen by the time of his death, of brain cancer, in 2009. In True Compass, a memoir published after his death, Kennedy wrote that his actions the night of the accident were “inexcusable,” and that he “made terrible decisions.”
He knew at the time the accident would be devastating to his family, Kennedy admitted, as well as damaging to his political career. Finally, Kennedy wrote that “my burden is nothing compared to [Kopechne’s] loss and the suffering her family had to endure. She also didn’t deserve to be linked to me in a romantic way. She deserved better than that.”
https://www.history.com/news/ted-kennedy-chappaquiddick-incident-what-really-happened-facts
I did not intend to dis Ted, who did go on to become one of the most respected members of the Senate. But the incident was a huge scandal at the time.
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