Caroline Kennedy has made it official: She wants to be appointed to the US Senate seat that Hillary Clinton presently will vacate.
Gov. Paterson would be well-advised to select Kennedy as New York’s next junior senator.
Her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, held the very same seat from 1965 until his assassination three years later. But the arguments for her selection go far beyond mere symbolism.
Consider her unusually high profile: As the only surviving child of President John Kennedy, she’d enter the Senate with considerably more political clout than the average freshman.
While she hasn’t been especially involved in New York’s political wars, she’s hardly unaware of the issues.
A city resident since shortly after her father’s assassination, she played a critical role in advancing the reform agenda spearheaded by Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.
In her two years heading the school system’s Office of Strategic Partnerships, she raised more than $65 million in private-sector funds for the city’s schools. She also serves as vice chairman of the Fund of Public Schools and is a board member of New Visions for Public Schools, which for two decades has worked to bring about systemic public-education reform.
As a member of Barack Obama’s vice presidential selection committee – and a key early endorser of his candidacy – she remains close to the president-elect. That kind of access and influence surely would prove critical for New York.
Moreover, Kennedy’s selection would be a welcome sign of Paterson’s willingness to reject the politics of pander and special-interest pressures merely to satisfy some ethnic or geographic quota.
As we noted last week, this state needs a senator of stature, with a willingness to tough it out when circumstances require.
To the surprise of many, New York got exactly that in Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And we believe it can do so again with the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to fill Clinton’s seat.