New York: How Long Are the Coattails?

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A New Equation. But when his chance to run for the Senate came in 1958, he was reluctant to take it. The U.S. was in the midst of a mild recession, and it looked like a big Democratic year. He entered the race a distinct underdog against Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan. He was helped by the usual factional row between New York's Democratic bosses and reformers, and he made devastating use of Jim Farley's scornful remark that Hogan's experience in national and international affairs "extends from the Battery to the Polo Grounds." In an upset victory, Keating squeaked in by 132,992 votes.

Before he got to the Senate, Keating used to say: "I don't like to be tagged conservative or liberal. I haven't made up my mind yet whether I'm a liberative or a conserveral." Once in the Senate, he quickly made up his mind: liberal. Over the next six years Keating established a Senate roll-call record next only to that of Maine Republican Margaret Chase Smith, but still managed to hop the shuttle to New York two, three and four times a week to attend a bar mitzvah, a Negro Elks meeting, a Roman Catholic communion breakfast. He kept his face before his constituents with a regular radio-television show, Senate Report, carried on 36 New York stations. And he kept his name in print with his disclosures of Russian missile bases in Cuba.

All this should have made Keating a shoo-in for reelection. Then came Jack Kennedy's assassination and a whole new equation.

First All the Time. In the aftermath of the Dallas slaying, Bobby Kennedy was a shaken man, and for months afterward he moved about mechanically. But slowly the old combativeness began to return-and Bobby, seventh of the nine Kennedy children, is the most combative of the clan.

"Bobby Kennedy," said Dave Powers, White House courtier in Jack's Administration, "has to be first all the time." That goes for everything, from a pickup game of touch football to managing his brother's presidential race. When he played touch football, his daughter Kathleen, now 13, would occasionally show up with her friends to cheer: Clap your hands and stamp your feet 'Cause Daddy's team, Daddy's team, can't be beat.

Last spring, when the first feelers were put out to him about the New York Senate race, Bobby seemed uninterested. "All things being equal," he said, "it would be better for a citizen of New York to run." In fact, Bobby had set his sights on the vice-presidency. But he was kidding himself. For one thing, he and Lyndon have always been able to restrain their enthusiasm for one another, and anyhow, Johnson, who understandably wants to be known for his own achievements, had pointedly advised longtime Kennedy Aide Kenny O'Donnell only one month after Dallas: "I'll never have a Kennedy on the ticket."