Thinking back on Ted Kennedy

Back in the days when I was a newspaper editor in Massachusetts, the paper often took editorial positions that weren't popular.

That was especially true during elections, because we would endorse candidates we thought were best suited to do the people's business, whether it be in City Hall or the U.S. Capitol.

In 1994, during the Republican revolution of Newt Gingrich, we endorsed Edward M. Kennedy for re-election to the U.S. Senate. He was a Democrat, a very liberal Democrat, almost out of fashion during those conservative years in Congress.

I think back to that election this week in thinking about Kennedy's death.

Stories are being told about how personable he could be, how he liked to do things in person that he could very well have turned over to an aide.

He reached out in that personal way to the newspaper after he won re-election. This is what I wrote in my Boomer Angst column on Nov. 17, 1994:
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Ted Kennedy called on Tuesday.

Right. The U.S. senator. The grateful, re-elected U.S. senator.

He called to thank this newspaper for its editorial endorsement of his candidacy for another six years in Washington, D.C.

We had received a few other calls about the endorsement too, from subscribers so upset with our decision to back Kennedy that they canceled their papers.

When he called, Kennedy happened to catch the publisher, general manager and me in a meeting. The publisher put the call on speaker phone for us all to chat.

Kennedy was chatty. He talked about his immediate agenda, the calm before the storm, if you will, before Dole, Gingrich & Co. take control of the Congress come January.

I commented that maybe we had done him a disservice in endorsing him considering the fact that control of Congress will, for the first time in 40 years, shift from Democrats to Republicans as a result of last Tuesday's election.

Kennedy said he sees a lot of symbolic political gesturing ahead, less of it in the Senate where Robert Dole will become majority leader, perhaps more of it in the House where Newt Gingrich is the likely next speaker.

For Kennedy, his reaction to Republican-controlled Senate doesn't really seem to bother him. Been there, done that, from 1980-86.

He has a jobs program high atop his agenda, and he's very confident he can work with GOP Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, who will take over from Kennedy as chair of the Labor and Human Resources Committee.

Baby Boomers are largely responsible for the new-look Congress to which Kennedy, at 62, returns.

More than half of voters age 30 to 44 voted Republican last Tuesday, compared with 42 percent in 1990.

The middle class also shifted allegiances -- with more voters in the $30,000 to $50,000 income bracket picking Republican candidates compared to four years ago.

The net result, besides the GOP-controlled Congress, is that 182 members of the new House are Baby Boomers, up from 106.

The real message of last week's election is not so much an endorsement of GOP ideologue as it is a desire by American voters to make changes in order to get things moving.

Voters will expect results, not stalemates or gridlock in the next two years. Kennedy and everyone else in Congress and the White House are well advised to seek the common ground for the common good.

Kennedy may have been grateful to us. But he has to make sure voters are grateful they made the decision they did.
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