TWO WEEKS AGO, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend sat down with me for an hourlong interview for an article focusing on the early stages of her campaign for governor in 2002.
She talked about her crime prevention initiatives, her new concentration on economic development issues and her political plans.
One thing we did not discuss.
"Did you realize I didn't ask you about your family?" I said as we wrapped up.
Townsend paused and smiled.
"You know, that's the first time that's ever happened," she said.
After 4 1/2 years in office, Townsend is beginning to be known in Maryland for her record, not simply for her middle name.
But when the small plane carrying her cousin, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister crashed off Martha's Vineyard, there was only one topic anybody wanted to discuss with her.
With an army of reporters hounding the Kennedy family, Townsend disappeared from public view for a week, trying to find privacy in her Ruxton home as she dealt with the death of another relative.
Such moments define the worst aspect of being a Kennedy -- family matters become major news, and privacy is hard won.
There is no doubt that being a Kennedy in politics is, on balance, a positive thing -- even in Maryland, far from the family's home base in Massachusetts.
Some people have suggested that Gov. Parris N. Glendening wouldn't have picked Townsend to be his running mate in 1994 if she had been named, for example, Kathleen Smith Townsend.
At the time, she held a relatively obscure federal job and her political experience consisted of a 1986 loss against then-U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley.
Townsend, 48, understands such things.
When asked about her family privileges, she talks earnestly about the doors that have opened for her -- and a corresponding civic responsibility.
Townsend has used her opportunity to pursue public-service goals she believes in: the state's mandatory voluntarism requirement for high school students, for example.
In her speeches, she does not shy from quoting her father, the late Robert F. Kennedy.
She also invokes her family's tragedies in certain circumstances. She brings up her brother David's death from an overdose when discussing the need for better drug treatment.
In meetings with victims of gun violence, she reminds them in an understated but powerful way that her family has suffered from violent crime.
