Kathleen Kennedy Townsend - Early Life, Education, and Law Career

Early Life, Education, and Law Career

Townsend was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the eldest of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy's 11 children, and the eldest grandchild of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She was named for her aunt Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish. It was not assumed that the girls in the politically-oriented Kennedy family would run for office or become public persons, while she was growing up. However, after her uncle President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, her father wrote her saying, "As the oldest of the next generation you have a particular responsibility.... Be kind to others and work for your country." Her family gave her the nicknames "Clean Kathleen", "the Nun", and "the Un-Kennedy".

She spent most of her childhood in McLean, Virginia, and attended Stone Ridge School in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. She graduated from The Putney School in Vermont. She attended Radcliffe College, receiving her bachelor's degree in history and literature in 1974. She then studied at the University of New Mexico School of Law, receiving her Juris Doctor degree in 1978.

For several years, she worked as an attorney in New Haven, Connecticut, while her husband attended Yale Law School. She also worked on her uncle Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign, stumped for local Democrats, and was a policy analyst for the Massachusetts governor's office in the early 1980s.

The family moved to Maryland, her husband's home state, in 1984. In 1986, Townsend became the first Kennedy to lose a general election when she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Maryland's strongly Republican second congressional district, using the name Townsend only. Incumbent Republican Helen Delich Bentley defeated her 41% to 59%.

She then went to work for the state government of Maryland, holding numerous posts including assistant Attorney General. She also served on the State Board of Education, and as a presidential elector. Following this, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General for two years during the Clinton administration.