In a Most Private Kennedy, a Lure of Public Duty

On the day last March that Caroline Kennedy visited the Bronx to honor Joya Ramirez, Ms. Ramirez dressed up in her gray gabardine suit and invited her three sisters, two nephews, niece, fiancé and seven friends to accompany her.
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Caroline, about 3, and her father, who is holding her doll.

A secretary for 44 years at the city's juvenile detention centers, Ms. Ramirez had been selected for a Sloan Public Service Award, and she was not about to skimp on her moment.

Shortly after Ms. Kennedy -- wearing a name tag -- stepped off a bus and into the Horizon Juvenile Center, Ms. Ramirez accepted from her a bounteous bouquet of flowers. Ms. Kennedy posed for pictures with each relative and chatted unhurriedly. It was a topsy-turvy moment when a civil servant savored the briefest of spotlights in the company of a famously reluctant celebrity. And then there were finger sandwiches and juice.

"I think everybody was impressed that she even came," Ms. Ramirez said. "If my last name was Kennedy, my feet wouldn't touch the ground."

There were no television cameras in Mott Haven that day; the Sloan awards program exists "largely below the radar," recognizing "people who are invisible," said Mary McCormick, president of the Fund for the City of New York, which administers the awards. And in that way, the program suited Ms. Kennedy, 51, who has always sought to perform public service as discreetly as possible.

Now, however, Ms. Kennedy, having offered herself as a candidate to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as New York's junior senator, stands poised to surrender her zealously guarded privacy and genteel civic involvement to dive headlong into the mosh pit of New York politics. She has already dipped a toe. After announcing her interest to Gov. David A. Paterson in December, Ms. Kennedy made a few forays into the field of self-promotion, which does not come naturally to her.

"I think she's constitutionally modest and constitutionally not a bloviator, and the 'look at me' part of politics is so antithetical to what she is," said Richard Plepler, a friend who is co-president of HBO. "But don't confuse that with a lack of passion or talent for making her case cogently and effectively."

Still, her initial public appearances elicited criticism that Ms. Kennedy had failed to exude warmth, express herself well or make a compelling case for why she should leapfrog over seasoned politicians. Not unlike Mrs. Clinton when she first sought the Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy, who is also considered smart and a serious student of public affairs with a household name, was challenged for a résumé thin on traditional professional experience. Raised to tend her family legacy but not to trade on it, Ms. Kennedy has struggled to make the case that she is motivated by the Kennedy ethic of public service and not by any sense of entitlement.

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant, said that she "plainly flubbed her rollout." But Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist who is close to the Kennedys, disagreed, saying that the New York press "hazed her like crazy," as when reporters zeroed in on the multiple times she uttered "you know." Mr. Shrum noted that her eloquent uncle Senator Robert F. Kennedy had his own verbal tic -- "the tendency to go 'ah,' which never got in his way."

Polls released last week showed that voters had cooled on Ms. Kennedy, increasingly favoring Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo. It is Governor Paterson who will make the selection -- he has interviewed other candidates, too, and is expected to announce his decision this week -- but the new senator will have to face the voters in 2010 and again in 2012.

Ms. Kennedy was neither surprised nor deterred by the initial "roughness of the politics, which might have made others dive under their beds," her close friend Nicole K. Seligman, general counsel of the Sony Corporation, said. Still, she once again withdrew from the public eye and declined to be interviewed for this article.

Relatives and friends sought to depict Ms. Kennedy as brainy, funny, loyal and remarkably down-to-earth for a woman whose life, with all its privilege and tragedy, has been documented like a national photo album.

The essential Caroline Kennedy whom they portrayed is a hands-on mother of three children and the author of seven books who has spent much of her adult life managing first the legacy of her assassinated father and then the memories and estates of her mother and younger brother.

"She never, ever displays entitlement," said Esther Newberg, her literary agent. "I have been sitting next to her at book signings where 800 people go through a line and say the exact same thing -- 'I went into politics because of your father' or 'Your mother was beautiful' or 'How hard it must be for you because of your brother' -- and she is unfailingly gracious where I would have begun to throw water at them."

Life in a Protected Zone

Friends and relatives say Ms. Kennedy's pursuit of the Senate seat is the logical conclusion of a year spent immersed in the presidential campaign. continue>>>

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