Opinion: Another Kennedy thinks he might like a U.S. Senate seat, Illinois’

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In the Kennedys’ master plan to have a family member elected to federal office from every state in the Union, another Kennedy is considering a run for the U.S. Senate.

Word out of Chicago today that Chris Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy once of New York, nephew to Ted Kennedy currently of Massachusetts, cousin to Caroline Kennedy also of New York, is seriously pondering a run in next year’s election at the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

That seat is currently occupied by Roland Burris, who is not a Kennedy and was appointed by Rod Blagojevich, the ex-governor planning who is a new career in reality TV unless he goes to prison for allegedly trying to auction off his nomination to fill the Obama seat.

Also not a Kennedy. Neither is Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, who used to hold the North Side Chicago House seat willed to him by Blagojevich when he became governor with the help of his wife’s father, probably Chicago’s most powerful alderman. Also not a Kennedy.

Chris Kennedy is president of the Merchandise Mart, an ancient office/showroom edifice and family investment in downtown Chicago that makes the Pentagon look like a minor condo complex.

Kennedy’s interest, reported by our colleague Mark Silva, could chase away some of the other contenders for the Democratic nomination such as Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, daughter of Illinois House Speaker John Madigan. Also not Kennedys.

Which is not to say that Illinois’ famous Democrat politics is not run by family clans.

Burris is a longtime Illinois Dem loyalist who worked his way up, is now the U.S. Senate’s sole African American and has never lost to a Republican. However, he is older; disliked by Harry Reid and Illinois’ other Democratic senator, Dick Durbin; no great fundraiser or speaker; and is tainted by his Blagojevich ties.

So if he’s smart -- and there’s no guarantee of that once you spend time in D.C. -- he’ll step out of the way next year and let the next generation of Illinois Democrats march in. And he’ll get put in some lucrative commission job or reap a pile of state legal business to shut up about it.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, was not a Kennedy either but loved them and did provide the 8,000 or so votes from somewhere that gave John F. Kennedy his narrow White House electoral win over Richard M. Nixon in 1960, has already said Chris Kennedy is a big name.

So that signal has gone out.

The Madigans are a smart family. So she might take aim now at the governor’s office, currently occupied by Pat Quinn, an empty suit plopped in there as Blago’s irrelevant ticket mate when Blago was really running the show. The governor hadn’t even talked to his lieutenant governor in recent years.

Quinn might like to run to keep the governor’s office for himself. But he’s sharply raising taxes as Blagojevich warned and, anyway, that’s probably not Quinn’s decision if he’d like to keep his knees, so to speak.

Next week: Laura suddenly suffers amnesia when missing fiance Rod shows up at her garden wedding to Phil.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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