Kathleen Hartington Kennedy Townsend (born July 4, 1951) is an American attorney who was the sixth (and first female) lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003. She ran unsuccessfully for governor of Maryland in 2002.

In 2010, Townsend became the chair of the non-profit American Bridge, an organization whose focus is to raise funds for Democratic candidates and causes.^[1] Since 2021, she has served in the United States Department of Labor as an advisor on retirement.^[2] She is a member of the prominent political Kennedy family, and is currently the oldest living grandchild of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

She was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the eldest of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel's eleven children.^[3] She is named after her paternal aunt Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington.^[4] She is the eldest grandchild of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy. Kennedy spent her childhood between the family's homes in McLean, Virginia and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.^[5][6] While she was growing up, it was not assumed that the girls in the politically oriented Kennedy family would run for office.^[7] 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."^[7] Her family gave her the nicknames "Clean Kathleen", "the Nun", and "the Un-Kennedy".^[7]

Over the summer of 1964, Kennedy won four blue ribbons for her "excellence in horsemanship".^[8] On August 29, 1965, the fourteen-year-old Kennedy was somersaulted by her horse while competing at Sea Flash Farms in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. She was left unconscious and bleeding internally and was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital, located fifteen miles away. Her family was en route to Hyannis Port at the time of the incident and was not located for another three hours.^[8]

She was sixteen when her father was assassinated.^[9] The night he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel, Kennedy and her two eldest brothers, Joseph II and Robert Jr., were being flown to Los Angeles aboard one of the planes in the Secret Service's presidential fleet named "the Jet Star".^[10]

She was educated at Our Lady of Victory Elementary School in Washington, D.C.,^[11] and later graduated from The Putney School in Vermont.^[4] 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.^[11][12]

After graduation, she worked as an attorney at a private law firm, Clendenen & Lesser,^[13] in New Haven, Connecticut, while her husband, David Townsend, attended Yale Law School.^[14] In 1982, she was admitted to the Massachusetts bar,^[15] and worked as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge A. David Mazzone.^[16] She also worked on her uncle Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign, stumped for local Democrats,^[7] and was hired as a policy analyst for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the early 1980s while she and her husband resided in Newton, Massachusetts.^[17][18]

The family moved to Maryland, her husband's home state, in 1984.^[7] In 1985, she was admitted to the Maryland bar.^[19] In 1986, Townsend became the first Kennedy family member to lose a general election when she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Maryland's strongly Republican 2nd congressional district, using the name Townsend only.^[7] Incumbent Republican Helen Delich Bentley defeated her 59% to 41%.

After her failed congressional bid, Townsend went to work for the state government of Maryland, holding numerous posts including assistant Attorney General.^[20] In 1993, Townsend took a job at the U.S. Justice Department overseeing grants to local police departments and community groups.^[11]

In the Maryland gubernatorial election of 2002, Townsend faced Republican Bob Ehrlich and Libertarian Spear Lancaster in the general election.

During the campaign, Townsend was criticized for her choice of running mate, Admiral Charles R. Larson, a novice politician who had switched parties only a few weeks before. Some also criticized the choice of a white male as unlikely to help minority turnout.^[25] Ehrlich's running mate was Michael Steele, an African-American lawyer who had been chairman of the Republican Party of Maryland.

Though Maryland traditionally votes Democratic and had not elected a Republican governor in almost 40 years, Townsend lost the race, gaining 48% of the vote to Ehrlich's 51% and Lancaster's 1%. Ehrlich became only the seventh Republican governor in state history. In the end, most observers agreed she ran a weak campaign. They specifically cited a lack of planning, claiming that she hastily booked campaign stops in rural areas hostile to her. The Baltimore Sun said the defeat derailed her political career, at least in the short run.^[25]

Townsend, along with siblings Robert, Jr. and Kerry,^[26] endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in the 2008 Democratic primaries.^[27]

Townsend wrote the book Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way, published in 2007.^[28] She also contributes to The Recovering Politician, a website started by Jonathan Miller.^[29]

She is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a visiting fellow at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, and senior Nitze fellow at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

In December 2010, she was appointed chair of American Bridge, a new non-profit that would raise funds for Democratic candidates and causes, and that was intended to be a Democratic counterpart to right-leaning organizations such as American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.^[1] She noted that the Democrats did not have such an organization during the 2010 election cycle, and that Republicans outspent the Democrats by $70 million. "I want to compete dollar to a dollar with the Republicans and I want to beat them", she said.^[30]

Kennedy Townsend has endorsed incumbent Democrat Joe Biden's reelection campaign in the 2024 United States presidential election over a third-party/independent challenge by her brother Robert.^[31]

In 1973, she married David Lee Townsend (born 1947),^[32] whom she had met when he was a graduate student and her tutor at Radcliffe.^[33] As of April 2020, David is a member of the faculty at St. John's College in Annapolis.^[34] The couple have four daughters:

• Meaghan Anne Kennedy Townsend (born November 7, 1977)
• Maeve Fahey Kennedy Townsend (November 1, 1979 – April 2, 2020)
• Rose Katherine "Kat" Kennedy Townsend (born December 17, 1983)
• Kerry Sophia Kennedy Townsend (born November 30, 1991)

On June 27, 2011, her daughter Maeve gave birth to a son named Gideon Joseph Kennedy McKean. Gideon was the first great-grandchild for Bobby and Ethel, as well as the first of the fifth generation of Kennedys.^[35]

Maeve and son Gideon went missing, and were presumed dead, in a canoeing accident that occurred on April 2, 2020. After 26 hours, the recovery mission was suspended. Maeve's body was found in the Chesapeake Bay on April 6^[36] and Gideon's body was recovered April 8. His body was 2,000 feet from where his mother's was found.^[37]

She has served on the boards of many organizations, and as a consultant to several corporations. She is the chair of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland. She is on the boards of directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation,^[38] the Center for American Progress and Catholic Democrats. She was formerly on the independent Advisory Council of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a panel that was appointed to review the functioning of ACORN following the scandal touched off by hidden camera videos in September 2009,^[39] and the board of the National Catholic Reporter. Townsend is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue. She is also on the Board of Selectors of Jefferson Awards for Public Service.^[40] She is on the board of directors at the Lightbridge nuclear fuel technology company.^[41]

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• Kennedy family tree
• List of female lieutenant governors in the United States