U.S. House of Representatives
Elections 2012 (center), and his predecessor
Barney Frank (right), 2012
Boston Pride Parade In January 2012, Kennedy announced he would form an exploratory committee to run in the newly redrawn
4th congressional district of Massachusetts. Kennedy explained, "I will then begin to reach out to the people of the Fourth District, in order to hear directly from them about the challenges they are facing and their ideas on how we can restore fairness to our system. I will make a final decision about entering the race in the weeks thereafter." He officially entered the election in February 2012. In an announcement video, Kennedy declared, "I believe this country was founded on a simple idea: that every person deserves to be treated fairly, by each other and by their government". In the same video, Kennedy vowed to fight for a "fair job plan", a "better educational system", a "fair tax code", and a "fair housing policy". In the September 6 primary, he faced Rachel Brown, a
Lyndon LaRouche acolyte, and Herb Robinson, an engineer and musician, winning the primary with around 90 percent of the vote. He was elected to the
House of Representatives on November 6, 2012, defeating
Republican candidate
Sean Bielat, winning over 60% of the vote.
2014 In the 2014 election, Kennedy ran unopposed in the primary and general elections. On November 4, 2014, he was re-elected to a second term with 184,158 votes (98%).
2016 In 2016, after running unopposed in the Democratic primary, Kennedy was re-elected to a third term, defeating Republican David Rosa by more than 40 percentage points.
2018 Kennedy was mentioned as a potential candidate for the
2018 Massachusetts gubernatorial election but declined, running for re-election to the House and saying he had no plans to run for any other office. He was re-elected unopposed.
Tenure , in 2018. Kennedy was sworn in to the
113th U.S. Congress on January 3, 2013, and assigned to the
Committee on Foreign Affairs and the
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He praised the technology committee assignment as an opportunity to secure federal funding, including
National Science Foundation and
Small Business Innovation Research grants, for life sciences companies in his district. As a freshman in his party, he was unable to secure a seat he had sought on the
Education Committee. During a February science committee hearing, Kennedy questioned
Texas Instruments president Richard Templeton about the company's efforts to compensate cancer-stricken former employees of its
Attleboro, Massachusetts, nuclear facility. A prolific fundraiser, he launched his
political action committee, the 4MA PAC, in April. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he traveled in May with four other legislators to
Afghanistan, where they met with President
Hamid Karzai and members of the military. That month, he was named chairman of Governor
Deval Patrick's
STEM Advisory Council. On July 24, 2013, Kennedy was one of seven members of the
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) to vote against the Amash-Conyers amendment to limit Section 215 of the
Patriot Act, which tried to restrict
NSA surveillance programs. In contrast, a majority of both CPC members and of Democratic members of Congress voted for the amendment, while Kennedy stood out as a supporter of the party leadership. His vote has been criticized as a sign for a lack of commitment to
civil liberties. Kennedy was a member of the
U.S.-Japan Caucus.
Response to the 2018 State of the Union On January 26, 2018, House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer announced that Kennedy would deliver the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's 2018 State of the Union address. His selection came after criticism that the
Democratic Party had relied too heavily on its oldest leaders since the
2016 presidential election. In choosing Kennedy, the party was seen as trying to bridge the gap with a new face attached to
one of the most famous names in American politics. On January 30, he gave the response to television cameras and a live studio audience in the automotive body shop of
Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School at
Fall River,
Massachusetts. The location was meant to emphasize the role immigrants have in American society. He spent the opening minutes of his speech boasting about the economy and industrial history of Fall River, a city in
his district. His audience included Diman Regional Technical School students. He praised
Black Lives Matter, and spoke in Spanish about
children who were brought into the United States illegally when they were minors. He also took numerous swings at Trump, criticizing the
Department of Justice for "rolling back civil rights by the day" and attacking the administration for "targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection". He accused Trump of turning American life "into a zero-sum game", and said that Democrats intended to aid the middle and lower classes. He closed by characterizing the state of the union as "hopeful, resilient, enduring". == 2020 U.S. Senate campaign ==