Caroline Kennedy says she's best for the job

(CNN) -- After weeks of criticism that she was being too elusive, Senate hopeful Caroline Kennedy is now talking about why she believes she is the best person for the job.

In a media blitz this weekend, Kennedy sought to explain what sets her apart from the handful of other people being considered for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.

"I would be an unconventional choice -- I haven't followed a traditional path, but I think I bring a lifetime of experience to this," she told NY1.

She also told The New York Times that "there's a lot of different ways that people are coming to public life now, and it's not only the traditional path."

Asked if she thinks she's the best fit, Kennedy told the Times, "Well, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I would be the best."

New York Gov. David Paterson has the sole responsibility of picking Clinton's replacement. His pick would serve for two years before running for election in 2010. If the candidate won that contest, he or she would have to run again in 2012, when Clinton's term ends.

If Paterson selects Kennedy, it would mean the continuation of a Kennedy legacy in the Senate that began 56 years ago with the election of her father, John F. Kennedy, as the junior senator from Massachusetts.

But some are questioning whether she's ready to follow the path taken by her father and her two uncles. 

Kennedy, 51, has been involved in education reform and women's issues but has never held public office and has mostly stayed out of the public spotlight.

Hank Sheinkopf, who worked for President Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign, said name recognition does not make Kennedy qualified for the job. "Does she have name recognition? So does Jennifer Lopez," Sheinkopf said.

"The Senate seat is not a legacy place. We haven't had a Kennedy elected to office from New York state since 1964, and a lot of people would like to keep it that way," he said, referring to Caroline's uncle Robert Kennedy.

Kennedy has insisted that she brings more to the table than her name.

"If my last name was not Kennedy, maybe I would have run for office a long time ago," she told NY1. "I'm proud of my family tradition. It means a lot to me. That's something that I want to live up to, and that's why I feel that I've been preparing myself to do this. But it isn't fundamentally about me -- it's about who can do the best job for the people of New York -- who Gov. Paterson thinks can do the best job for delivering for the people of New York."

But now that she is publicly seeking the seat, her name does make it easy for her to get attention, according to Lynn Sweet, the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times.

"This is the megaphone of the Kennedy celebrity. This is one -- this is the most famous political family in America, the legendary family," she said.

"What's interesting here, one of the other people who would like to be appointed, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, he comes from another big New York political family, but, yes, it's hard even for him even to be heard."

Cuomo is the son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. He is one of New Yorkers' top choices for the seat, according to recent polls.

A new national poll suggest that just over half of Americans think Kennedy has the necessary qualifications, with 52 percent saying she is qualified and 42 percent saying she is not. Read what Americans think about Kennedy

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, released Monday, also shows a gender gap -- with 57 percent of women saying she's qualified, compared with 47 percent among men. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"Men may think of qualifications for public office in terms of work experience, while women may be looking at a candidate's life experience," said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "Caroline Kennedy has a personal history that may be compelling to many women, but her résumé is not very long, and that may be a mark against her to some men."

The mother of three has spent most of her life in New York City, working there after graduating from Harvard, meeting her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, on the job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending Columbia Law School there.

Her most prominent public roles to date involved overseeing her father's presidential library and presenting the annual Profiles in Courage Award.

Most of her leadership positions have been based in the arts: hosting the annual nationally televised Kennedy Center Honors in Washington and serving as the honorary chairwoman of the American Ballet Theatre, as her mother had.

Sweet, of the Sun-Times, said there's no clear path to the Senate, so it's hard to compare résumés for the job.

"We know that people come to this from all walks of life. There is no one qualification for Senate," she said.

Kennedy has said she's always considered political office, but was finally moved to action after working on President-elect Barack Obama's presidential campaign. She endorsed Obama early in the campaign and served on his vice presidential search team.

Paterson has said he will not appoint Clinton's replacement until the seat officially becomes vacant.

"Unconventional choice" indeed. Much like hiring a kindergarden teacher to fix my car, or a librarian to be an astronaut. 

I'm afraid it is impossible for me to roll my eyes hard enough. "There is no one qualification for Senate"? Sure there is. An election. A vote from one's potential constituents. Or at the very least, a record of public service. 

A specific surname and a specific gender simply doesn't cut it. 

It's not necessarily the nepotism itself that bothers me. There are plenty of political "dynasties" in American politics (for better or worse). Look at Beau Biden, Jeb Bush, etc. Now, I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy at all on a personal level. She seems like an admirable person. But for cryin' out loud, she's less qualified for this senate seat than Sarah Palin was for VP! At least Palin had executive experience... at least she was elected to previous public offices. The only, ONLY reason Kennedy is being considered for this seat is her last name, and the fact she's a woman. Unbelievable. Especially after how much shit the Dems (rightfully) piled on Palin for her lack of experience and qualifications. 

Please tell me I'm not the only one rubbed the wrong way by all of this?  

NC Senate Democratic Primary Endorsement

On the issues, there's a clear progressive choice in the Democratic primary: Chapel Hill businessman Jim Neal is our pick to take on Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole come November. And let's put it right out there: Neal is openly gay, which should no more influence whether he gets your vote than the fact that he's also openly white. What should influence it is his platform: Neal opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and supports getting our troops out now; he supports universal health care; is against capital punishment; wants to scrap No Child Left Behind, Bush's counterproductive education program; proposes making the federal tax system more progressive; and advocates an Apollo-style program to wean the country from imported oil and develop alternative-energy sources, including conservation.

On gay rights, Neal supports full equality, including marriage, as a matter of law. But he also recognizes that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom when it comes to whether same-sex unions should be sanctioned by various faiths.

Given his background as a Wall Street investment banker and venture capitalist, Neal is at his best when dissecting the causes of the nation's widening gap between rich and poor and the erosion of middle-class jobs. He calls it "unconscionable" that corporate CEOs make 400 times as much money as the average worker. His prescription for fixing what ails us includes sweeping investments in education and our economic infrastructure, not war, and for junking free-trade policies in favor of fair-trade ones. He thinks the federal government should prepare to buy mortgages and refinance them to prevent foreclosures.

Neal is hardly a perfect candidate. He's never run for office, can be long-winded and abstract about policy, and while he grew up in North Carolina, he's lived elsewhere most of his adult life. He acknowledges that his business life has had its ups and, recently, some downs. He's not rich, and has had trouble raising money despite having been a top fundraiser for the '04 Democratic ticket of Kerry-Edwards.

That said, Neal didn't get into this race until every potential "establishment" candidate from Gov. Mike Easley on down had walked away from it. That includes state Sen. Kay Hagan, D-Guilford, who announced that she wouldn't run, but changed her mind a few weeks later—after Neal declared. Party leaders in Washington and Raleigh quickly endorsed her; the inescapable conclusion was that they feared having a gay candidate on the ticket.

Hagan is a former bank lawyer whose politics are rooted in the moderate-to-conservative side of the party. As one of the Senate's appropriations chairs, she's helped shape state budgets that do well by education but maintain a regressive tax structure. On the campaign trail, she's finally getting up to speed on national issues; for example, after not knowing what to say about Iraq, she's lately started to talk about "redeploying" out of there, though not on any timetable.

She obviously expects to be Dole's opponent and is keeping her powder dry—and away from any "liberal" influences—until the main event. She's refused to meet Neal in a televised debate on grounds that the three other, minor candidates weren't invited too. The three—Duskin Lassiter, Howard Staley and Marcus Williams—weren't invited because they aren't running serious, let alone statewide, campaigns.

In the Republican primary, we endorse neither candidate. Dole has devoted most of her first term to traveling the country—not, however, including North Carolina—as chair of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Her efforts in that regard were not just a failure but an embarrassment. Worse, though, is her steady support for all things Bush. The only exception is her newfound enthusiasm for harassing illegal immigrants, the tack she's used to re-introduce herself to the state she supposedly represents. Dole's primary opponent, a retired New York City cop named Pete DiLauro, is a perennial office-seeker with nothing to recommend him.

This endorsement is taken from the Triangle Independent Weekly, a publication from the Raleigh-Durham area. We haven't talked about more local politics in a while, and until recently I embarrassingly knew barely anything about the Senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates. So here is something on the issue. I generally agree with the endorsement of Neal for Senate. I am realistic enough, however, to know that an openly gay candidate has a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected in North Carolina. Still, if he makes it through the primary, he might have shot against Dole. She has done jack shit for the state and has been sucking the teat of the W for 7 years. Bad Dole.