News: The Record, Aug. 20, 2006

What's in a name? Maybe victory

BY JOSH GOHLKE
(The Record , Aug 20, 2006)

The political potency of Republican candidate Tom Kean Jr.'s name makes it a crucial battleground in this year's U.S. Senate race.

With only a suffix separating the young state lawmaker's name from that of his lionized father, former Gov. Tom Kean, the campaigns are struggling over how candidate Tom will be defined: as Kean, or as Junior?

That question was at the center of last week's developments. As the elder Kean made a series of television appearances promoting a book about his acclaimed service on the 9/11 Commission, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez's campaign was arguing that the ex-governor's corporate connections had yielded suspect fund-raising benefits for his son.

That provoked a counterattack from Republicans, who relished the chance to engage Democrats over a personality as popular as Kean pere. State Senate Republican leader Leonard Lance, a former Kean administration aide with a flair for indignation, led the charge. Lance argued that the idea of Tom Kean committing an ethical lapse was, on its face, ridiculous.

"Tom Kean is more than a decent and honorable man," Lance said in a press conference. "He is a man of great integrity, a man of the highest moral caliber, and a man whose ethics are beyond reproach. He is the most prominent New Jerseyan to serve the nation since Woodrow Wilson."

Menendez spokesman Matt Miller responded without the apology that Lance had demanded, while also taking care to emphasize that his target was the son.

"Trotting out old family friends to fight his battles won't change the truth about Tom Kean Jr.'s corporate shakedown scandal," Miller said. "Tom Kean Jr.'s problem is with the facts, which in this case are simple. Tom Kean Jr. has been raising money from corporate executives whose compensation is determined by his father."

As Miller's statement illustrated, suffix is prefix for supporters of Menendez, who sometimes drop the "Tom Kean" altogether and just call him "Junior." The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee asserts on its attack Web site, toojuniorforjersey.com, "Tom Kean Jr. is no Tom Kean Sr."

Kean's campaign, meanwhile, treats "Jr." as the least important part of his name, so inconsequential as to be frequently forgotten. The candidate and the campaign don't always drop the "Jr.," but his address on the Web is tomkean.com, a site paid for by the campaign fund "Tom Kean for U.S. Senate Inc." Kean spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker assures, however, "There's no conspiracy."

"He's going to be on the ballot as Thomas H. Kean Jr.," she said.

Positive feedback

Neither side expects Kean to get many votes from people who actually mistake him for his father. In April, a little more than 10 percent of voters seemed to be confusing the younger with the older in a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. As knowledge of the candidates increases with the election drawing nearer, that figure is bound to shrink.

More significant are the positive associations evoked by the Kean name. A Quinnipiac University poll in March found that a quarter of Kean's supporters would vote for him chiefly because they liked his father -- nearly as many as cited agreement with his positions.

The name is powerful enough that insiders are quick to attach numbers to it. One Republican judged it to be worth "millions of dollars in positive gross ratings points," a measure of advertising reach used by campaigns. A Democrat guessed that it gives the candidate a 10-point boost in the current polls, but predicted that would diminish in the fall.

The political impact of a name is not confined to this time, this place or even this Kean. In Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Jr., a Democratic son of a popular former governor, is threatening to unseat Republican Sen. Rick Santorum -- who, in a variation on the "Junior" strategy, calls him "Bobby."

In Oklahoma earlier this year, the media firm Alfano Leonardo ran an ad for a state treasurer candidate reminding viewers that his opponent was "not former Gov. Frank Keating." It was Dan Keating, his twin brother. The firm now works for Tom Kean Jr.

Alvin Felzenberg, the elder Kean's biographer, recalled coming across a yellowed, undated newspaper headlined, "Kean's son to run for Congress." After further research, he found that the "Kean's son" in question was Robert Winthrop Kean, the son of U.S. Sen. Hamilton Fish Kean -- and the grandfather of Tom Kean Jr.

The younger Kean can call on a political lineage that extends to Continental Congress delegate John Kean, his great-grandfather's great-grandfather. With Democrats pressing him about whether or not he would support a renewed effort to divert Social Security funding into private accounts, Kean noted that Rep. Robert Kean was a fierce advocate for the program who was sometimes referred to as "Mr. Social Security."

Tom Kean Sr. left the governor's office in 1990 with ironclad approval ratings, which were only bolstered by his turn as non-partisan national conscience on the 9/11 Commission. Polls reliably rank him as the state's most popular ex-governor. Even a candidate claiming no relation to him, 2005 gubernatorial candidate Doug Forrester, called himself a "Tom Kean Republican."

Seizing that advantage is less of a stretch for someone who actually is a Tom Kean as well as a Republican, and the Kean campaign is not bashful about it. In recent months, his camp has asserted at different times that "Kean" is a synonym for nothing less than "integrity," "independence," "trust" and "honesty."

So far the former governor has not played a prominent role in the campaign, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to forget about him. The past few months have seen the publication of a book about the elder Kean, by Felzenberg, and another one written by Kean and 9/11 Commission Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton, detailing the work that led to the body's best-selling report.

Over the past week, the former governor has appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" and others.

At Bookends in Ridgewood last month, Kean joined Felzenberg to promote his book, "Governor Tom Kean: From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 9/11 Commission." Asked about the coincidence of his book's publication during the younger Kean's campaign, Felzenberg said he began work on it in August 2001, when a host of intervening events could not have been imagined.

"I got all sorts of things," Kean said, referring to the books and an upcoming ABC special on the commission. "You go on with your life and you do things."

Mr. Popular

Such is the elder Kean's popularity that opponents are sometimes reduced to a form of claiming him as their own. House Democrats last week cited Kean's criticisms of the government as proof that people should vote against his fellow Republicans. Menendez recently introduced legislation and held a press conference drawing attention to his support for implementing all the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.

The Menendez campaign has also tried to tarnish the name by suggesting that the younger Kean is gaining unfair advantage from his family's wealth and power. In a recent open letter that began "Dear Mr. Kean Jr.," Menendez campaign manager Steve DeMicco demanded that the candidate disclose details of his "inheritance" and whether he would spend it on the race.

In the past two weeks, Democrats have also criticized the candidate for accepting more than $20,000 in campaign contributions from donors affiliated with the Minnesota-based insurer UnitedHealth Group. Kean's father sits on the company's board, including the committee that approved controversial stock options that were backdated to maximize their value to executives.

"New Jerseyans know a quid pro quo when they see one, and Tom Kean Jr.'s raising money from executives who need to curry favor with members of his family shows he's found a whole new way to play the game," the Menendez campaign's Miller said last week.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the younger Kean raised most of the UnitedHealth dollars at a breakfast in Minnesota in May, on the same day his father and the rest of the board were meeting to discuss the stock options. The Keans say the fund-raiser was organized by Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman and that the two Keans didn't even know they were in the same state on the same day.

"My father had no involvement in that fund-raiser in any way, shape or form, and I don't ever talk to my father about board conversations of which he is a part," candidate Kean said last week. "But this is a situation in which Bob Menendez is trying to distract the public."

UnitedHealth employees have given more than $180,000 to various political campaigns of both parties since last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The ex-governor serves on the boards of six corporations. The younger Kean has accepted about $18,000 in contributions from employees connected to another of them, the oil company Hess Corp. (which has also contributed generously to New Jersey Democrats). Little or none of Kean's campaign funds are connected to the other companies where his father serves.

The elder Kean said in an interview Friday that no Democrat has accused him of being influenced by any of his own campaign contributors, let alone his son's. He said this move would not help Menendez.

"I don't think it will do anything except get me a little more involved in the campaign than I've been," Kean said. "I guess now I'd better get involved."