Caroline Kennedy, daughter of late US President John F Kennedy, is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
NEW YORK: Caroline Kennedy, daughter of late US President John F Kennedy, is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be the Secretary of State in the incoming Barack Obama administration.
The nomination for the seat will be done by New York Governor David Paterson and she would later have to fight the election.
Kennedy, making her the highest-profile candidate to express a desire for the job, called on several leading figures in the party including Paterson in which she "emphatically and enthusiastically" declared herself interested in the seat, thus confirming weeks of speculation.
Paterson himself said that she had informed him on Monday that she is interested in the position and would like to sit down and tell him what she thinks her qualifications are. But he asserted that he had not yet taken the decision.
However, the New York Times cited several people who have counseled the governor on the pending vacancy to say that Kennedy has emerged as a clear front-runner, if she proves able to withstand the intense scrutiny and criticism that her decision to seek the seat is likely to provoke.
Still, some have questioned whether Kennedy is qualified for the job, it added.
Kennedy, the Times said, is now launching a public effort to demonstrate that she has both the ability and the stomach to perform the job, with plans to visit parts of the upstate region.
The governor, who has expressed frustration with other elected officials for campaigning too openly, has done nothing to discourage her, the paper said quoting an unidentified person who has spoken with Kennedy.
In addition, a person with direct knowledge of the conversations said that Kennedy and Paterson had spoken several times in recent days and that the governor had grown increasingly fond of her, the paper added.
The person, who the Times did not identify, was quoted as saying Paterson also had come to see Kennedy as a strong potential candidate whose appointment would keep a woman in the seat and whose personal connections would allow her to raise the roughly USD 70 million required to hold on to the seat in the coming years.
Under state law, Kennedy would have to run and win in 2010, to finish out the last two years of Clinton's term, and again in 2012, to win a term of her own.
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