Rep. Michael Capuano '73, D-Mass., will formally announce whether he will enter the race for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the late Edward Kennedy this week, according to Alison Mills, Capuano's press secretary. Capuano obtained nomination papers for the Senate seat on Sept. 8.
"I believe that the voters of Massachusetts want to continue the progressive ideals that Senator Ted Kennedy fought for during his decades of service," Capuano said in a statement. "No other candidate being mentioned or already announced more closely mirrors Ted Kennedy's positions on important issues of war and peace."
Capuano, who earned a law degree from Boston College after graduating from Dartmouth, was first elected to Congress in 1988 and represents Massachusetts' eighth Congressional District, which is considered one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. Both John F. Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy II previously represented the district, which covers a portion of the city of Boston as well as Chelsea, Cambridge and Somerville.
Joseph Kennedy announced earlier this month that he would not seek the Senate seat.
With Kennedy out of the running, significant funds that would have gone towards his campaign are now available for other Democratic candidates seeking the seat, according to Dennis Hale, a political science professor at Boston College.
Capuano is the third Democrat to indicate an interest in Kennedy's seat, along with Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.
"Capuano has obvious strengths as a candidate for senator, including that he is tight with labor and has a good liberal voting record," Hale said.
Lynch will be Capuano's primary competitor among the other Democratic candidates, because the two share similar backgrounds and appeal, Hale said.
"They both come from union families," Hale said. "So they would be competing for the same collection of voters, so my guess is that one of them will drop out [of the Senate race] at some point."
Although candidates are just beginning to announce their intention to run for the open Senate seat, planning for those campaigns began long ago, Hale said.
"It was apparent that Ted Kennedy's career was ending soon," Hale said. "But given how important and popular Kennedy was, at least in Democratic circles in the state, nobody could really campaign while he was still alive."
Since Massachusetts Democrats share similar policies, other factors like presentability, age and ethnicity will help voters distinguish among the candidates during the early rounds of the election process, Hale said.
Capuano and other state Democrats all endorse health care reform and increasing taxes for high-income individuals, and tend to be skeptical of continuing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Capuano, however, hails from a particularly liberal district, according to Fred Bayles, director of the Statehouse Program at Boston University, which covers politics for news outlets around the state. Bayles questioned whether a Capuano campaign would garner state-wide success, as Capuano is arguably the most far left of the current Democratic candidates.
"His district is a good base for him, but his district is not representative of the whole state," Bayles said.
