Kennedy

Put Patrick Kennedy in front of a microphone at the state-run Rhode Island Veterans Home, during a steak fry sponsored by the largest state employees union, and he sends the applause-o-meter off the charts.

“Let’s hear a round of applause for our veterans. Let’s hear it for all of those staff who have made it possible for us to enjoy this great lunch here today.”

“We are not talking about having some private contract vendor come in here and provide some premade dinner and some prepackaged desserts ….We are talking people coming into the kitchen and making fresh meals, home-cooked meals for the people here, just as they would want to have served at their own home AND THAT’S THE WAY IT OUGHT TO BE,” he bellows into the microphone.

A chorus of “yeahs” rings out from the disabled residents of the Veterans Home, as they knock back bottles of nonalcoholic O’Doul’s beer with their slabs of beef; from the cafeteria staffers, who have already dodged one privatization threat by Republican Governor Carcieri; and from the top-echelon of Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, who are here, in part, to cheer on Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional slate.

This part comes easy for Rhode Island’s Kennedy.

But this is not an easy time for him. His hand quivers. He says he sees a therapist “several times a week,” takes antidepressants and relies heavily on a “tight-circle of support … so that I am not in any position where I am going to get lost like I have before without some safety net in place for people to catch me.”

Asked whether he has stayed clean and sober since famously crashing his car into a concrete barrier near the U.S. Capitol in 2006, he says: “One day at a time.”

And the first question he runs into on the campaign trail has nothing to do with his voting record in Washington.

“How’s your father?”

“Writing his memoirs,” he answers. “And he’s getting geared up for January, actively engaged with what he hopes to be [Barack] Obama’s transition. He will have a few things to say about who gets placed where, I think … and that will be fun.”

Even state Republican Chairman Giovanni Cicione feels compelled to go easy in this election season on ailing Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy’s 41-year-old congressman son. A part of the political fabric of America for as long as most people alive today can remember, the elder Kennedy was diagnosed this past spring with brain cancer.

Asked recently what questions he would want the younger Kennedy to answer, Cicione e-mailed this response: “Given his family situation these days I would tend to want to give the guy a pass on any of the more interesting stuff … [But] I think he needs to answer why he won’t debate Jon Scott.”

Challenger Scott suggests a reason: “The congressman does not represent Rhode Island, he represents the government. Why else would he deprive his constituents of a debate?”

This is Republican Scott’s second run at Kennedy. In 2006, he garnered 23 percent of the vote after raising and spending little more than $9,500 against a six-term incumbent with a $2.2-million war chest. This year, he says, he hasn’t raised enough to have to file regular fundraising reports with the Federal Elections Commission.

Independent Kenneth A. Capalbo, a retired corrections officer, also amassed enough signatures on a nominating petition to get his name on the ballot, after winning roughly 7 percent of the vote two years ago. He does not appear to be raising any money or waging an active campaign.

Republican Scott has no delusions about winning, but says he is out to make the point that election to the U.S. Congress is not an entitlement: “Mr. Kennedy is a millionaire, he wasn’t born in Rhode Island, he has never worked in Rhode Island … I think we need someone in Congress who has been through the daily economic struggles that face Rhode Islanders every day.”

Scott, 41, has an unusual history for a congressional candidate.

In 1997, the never-married Scott adopted a teenager, Chris, from the group home he was running at the time. A year later, he sank into bankruptcy after taking what he describes as a year off to work with his son who is now 26, “doing well,” and running concession stands at fairs and festivals.

Scott acknowledges he hasn’t worked full-time since sometime in 2004-05, after a 12-year stint as the residential coordinator for three group-homes for troubled adolescent males run by a company under contract with the Department of Children, Youth & Families.

Since then, he says, he has had occasional gigs writing grant proposals for nonprofits, including an animal-rescue group known as Furball Farms.

He describes himself as a social moderate who supports, for example, the 1973 Rowe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. But he says he is also more conservative than some of his fellow Republicans on “core issues,” such as: “small government, lower taxes, a strong national defense.”

Asked where his votes would have differed from Kennedy’s had he been in Congress, Scott says he never would have voted for the $700-billion Wall Street bailout package. “I don’t think government should be in the business of business,” he says. Unlike Kennedy, he says, he never would have voted for a September 2008 deadline — or any other “public” timetable — for troop withdrawal in Iraq. He said we should pull out when we can declare “a win,” which he defined as being in a position to “hand over a country to an indigenous security force that can ensure the safety of the people.”

On immigration, Scott says he would have voted for a national border fence, but more generally believes in enforcing existing laws against employers who hire illegal immigrants and creating a larger temporary visa program “so that people could work in this country, but there’s accountability.” While initially expressing reservations, Kennedy’s office says he eventually voted for a 300-mile border fence that was part of a larger spending bill and that he also supports stronger enforcement of existing workplace immigration laws.

On health care, Scott thinks government should simply lift the barriers to buying coverage from insurers in other states “with fewer mandates,” and to make the same health benefits that are available to federal employees “available to anybody in the country” who wants to buy in. Kennedy favors universal health care.

But Scott has virtually no money, no help from the national GOP, no campaign fliers, no paid ads to get his views out. It’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma. “Because I don’t have $1.8 million in the bank,” Scott says he is not taken “seriously.”

Kennedy, by contrast, has been rolling in campaign money, though his staff refuses to say who has hosted his fundraisers.

He had $343,177 left in mid-October after raising $1.4 million over the last two years. Of that, $200,000 has gone into a final three-week run of TV ads, touting his prowess at winning federal grant money for Rhode Island businesses. He has a South Main Street campaign address, a campaign manager, Andrew Caruolo, the 23-year-old son of former Rhode Island House Majority Leader George Caruolo, and a small fleet of consultants and campaign-paid staffers.

And he once again ranks first in the U.S. House, and fourth among all members of Congress, in the amount of money raised during the two-year election cycle from Indian gambling interests across the country: $75,950. Only lawyers and health professionals gave him more, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Other top contributors include the Marwood Group, a New York City-based financial services firm co-owned by his brother, Edward Kennedy Jr.; Raytheon; General Dynamics and a phalanx of unions.

A magnet for rumors, Kennedy says he is not interested in running for Jack Reed’s U.S. Senate seat should Reed be tapped for a major role in an Obama administration or, at any point, for his father’s long-held Senate seat from Massachusetts.

He explains. “My dad is The Senator, so to speak, in my family…. [He] is going to go down in history as truly one of the greatest senators that has ever served in that chamber ... He’s made the Senate his home … I really feel like the House is my home.”

“I have 14 years under my belt, over half of that on the Appropriations Committee, which is one of the most powerful committees in Congress … The way I look at it, I can accrue a position of real strength for Rhode Island in the House just by waiting out my colleagues because right now, I am working my way up to the top … in the top third already of the most senior members. And I just turned 41, so I am in good shape.”

He hails the recent passage of his long-sought mental-health parity bill as “the crown of my legislative success stories so far.” He says he made mental-health coverage a crusade because he thinks everyone should be able to get the same level of care he gets.

Why won’t he make time to debate Jon Scott?

“I have no problem debating Jon Scott,” he says, but “usually debates are about people trying to discover [what] people’s records are … I daresay, mine is probably about the best known of anybody’s record in the state, so debates are usually at this stage theater and gotcha games and opportunities. If that’s what it’s going to be about, then I’m not going to be a part of that.”

But ask him — and he readily acknowledges — that with the prospect of a Democrat in the White House, some of his views are changing.

In September 2007, for example, he said: “If we truly wish to build an America that is safer and stronger, we need to begin drawing down in Iraq, to redeploy our soldiers and Marines back home and concentrate our efforts in Afghanistan, where our real enemy, al-Qaida, is making a resurgence.”

Asked more recently where he stands today on the need for a firm timetable for troop withdrawal, he said: “It’s something the next commander in chief has to decide.”

kgregg@projo.com