Kathleen Townsend entered this political season a Kennedy and exits it an afterthought. Parris Glendening brought her into his gubernatorial race in early summer, to a great splash of publicity, and since then nobody's even heard her name on a television commercial.
Who can figure these things? This is a woman picked for her name recognition, but nobody's even mentioned it in the last four months. Her selection, which seemed inspired to some and cynical to others, has now become a mere footnote to this campaign.
The cynicism's easy to point out. While Townsend's a bright, attractive, idealistic woman with the energy of pistons run amok, there are plenty of people with similar credentials, and they've worked long years learning the intricacies of Maryland politics. Only they aren't named Kennedy. And they didn't move from no history of elective office to a run for the No. 2 position in the state.
The name alone was supposed to provoke magic, to show us that Glendening remembered a more idealistic time, to let the Kennedy name obscure the emptiness of the office of lieutenant governor, and the vacuum of Townsend's State House record.
(True, Ellen Sauerbrey's running mate, Paul Rappaport, has no record in state politics, either. But the Rappaport name doesn't carry quite the same magic, except maybe in the Rappaport household.)
But then comes the strange part of the Glendening-Townsend story. Having made her his running mate, and having introduced her with great fanfare, Glendening seems to have sentenced her to obscurity, as if he had second thoughts about her.
There she is, going door-to-door in Baltimore neighborhoods. There she is, going from one shopping center to another. There she is, meeting sorority groups, senior citizens. All of these things are the necessary nuts and bolts of a political campaign, but all consign her to a profile so low as to have become invisible.
The Glendening TV ads, which seem to appear every 37 seconds, never mention her. The woman most mentioned in Glendening speeches and debates is his wife, Frances Anne. There was at least one, rare campaign appearance where Glendening and Townsend actually appeared together, and Townsend merely stood grinning by his side while Glendening spoke for about 20 minutes to several dozen potential campaign donors.
"Well, the person who's important is the governor," Townsend was saying late Tuesday night. "He's the one they want to hear. I'm the support team. I have no problem with that. People decide how to vote on the basis of governor."
Ten o'clock at night, at the end of another campaign day that began around dawn, she still seemed energetic, upbeat, full of conviction and --. Every day, she said, people approach her and mention her father, Robert F. Kennedy, and her uncle John F. Kennedy. They do make the connection, all these years later.
"It makes me very happy," she says simply, and quickly adds, "But they also say, 'I'm glad you're running with Parris.' A lot of people say that."
"Some make the Kennedy connection," says Glendening spokesman Dave Seldin, "but she's achieved enough in her own right, and in her association with Parris. It wasn't true at first, but it has grown a lot."
This kind of talk is a little puzzling. The general understanding was that Townsend was named running mate precisely for her maiden name, precisely in spite of no political achievements of her own. The talk, inevitably, was about the name attracting money to the campaign.
"We're not going to reject that extra support," Glendening declared, in dry understatement, when asked about such Kennedy-connection financial help. And, for whatever reasons, money has arrived. The campaign commercials fill the air. Sauerbrey refers to Glendening, with a mix of envy and contempt, as the $6 million man.
But now, with the race apparently tight and five days remaining until Election Day, it's strictly Glendening vs. Sauerbrey. Nobody mentions Rappaport, but nobody ever thought they would. Nobody mentions Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, either, and she was supposed to bring headlines.
"No, no," she was saying Tuesday night. "This has been what I expected. I love it. I love running, I love meeting people, listening to them, and thinking what I have to accomplish. I've been around a lot."
But not particularly the way many people have noticed.