Hey, How About Another Kennedy In the Senate?

Despite Harry Reid's premature pronouncement that Ted Kennedy has been cured, there's no guarantee that we'll have a Kennedy in the Senate in the not too distant future. So obviously there might not be any time to waste in getting another one in there.

No, not Caroline, you know. That nascent bid went up, you know, in flames.

No, it isn't the former heroin addict Robert F. Kennedy Jr., either. He's too busy trying to cobble together a coherent sentence, cleaning up the Hudson River, and trying to turn the lights out on New York state by shutting down Indian Point.

And no, it's not Ted's spawn, Patches, the Rhode Island Congressthing last seen whacked out on Ambien and driving erratically.

So who is it? Why, a Kennedy nobody has really quite heard much of before by the name of Christopher, and you'll never guess whose seat he's got his eye on.

In their master plan to have a family member elected to federal office from every state in the Union, another Kennedy is considering a run for the U.S. Senate.

Word out of Chicago today that Chris Kennedy, son of Robert Kennedy once of New York, nephew to Ted Kennedy currently of Massachusetts, cousin to Caroline Kennedy also of New York, is seriously pondering a run at the Illinois Barack Obama Senate seat in next year's election.

That seat is currently occupied by Roland Burris, who is not a Kennedy and was appointed by Rod Blagojevich, the ex-governor planning a new career in reality TV unless he goes to prison for allegedly trying to auction off his nomination to fill the Obama seat.

Also not a Kennedy. Neither is Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, who used to hold the North Side Chicago House seat willed to him by Blagojevich when he became governor with the help of his wife's father, probably Chicago's most powerful alderman. Also not a Kennedy.

Chris Kennedy is president of the Merchandise Mart, an ancient office/showroom edifice and family investment in downtown Chicago that makes the Pentagon look like a minor condo complex.

Kennedy's interest, reported by our colleague Mark Silva, could chase away some of the other contenders for the Democratic nomination like Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, daughter of Illinois House Speaker John Madigan. Also not Kennedys.

Which is not to say that Illinois' famous Democrat politics is not run by family clans.

Burris is a longtime Illinois Dem loyalist who worked his way up, is now the U.S. Senate's sole African American and has never lost to a Republican. However, he is older, disliked by Harry Reid and Illinois' other Democratic senator, Dick Durbin, no great fundraiser or speaker and is tainted by his Blagojevich ties.

So if he's smart -- and there's no guarantee of that once you spend time in D.C. -- he'll step out of the way next year and let the next generation of Illinois Democrats march in. And he'll get put in some lucrative commission job or reap a pile of state legal business to shut up about it.

Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose father Mayor Richard M. Daley was not a Kennedy either but loved them and did provide the 8,000 or so votes from somewhere that gave John F. Kennedy his narrow White House electoral win over Richard M. Nixon in 1960, has already said Chris Kennedy is a big name.

So that signal has gone out.