WASHINGTON — Lefty influencer Jack Schlossberg’s famous family lineage won’t be enough to win the competitive race to succeed outgoing Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, according to longtime Kennedy biographer Laurence Leamer.
“First of all, the Kennedy name is not magic any longer,” Leamer, author of the upcoming book “Lady’s man: the careless life of John F. Kennedy,” told The Post.
Schlossberg, 32, the grandson of John F. Kennedy who is famous for his online trolling and incendiary screeds against Republicans, launched his campaign for New York’s Manhattan-based 12th Congressional District seat on Wednesday.
Part of his pitch to voters leaned on the Kennedy name, including with a photo on his campaign website in which he mimics poses with a bike in a way that is eerily similar to that of a famous photo of his late uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr.
“He’s going to have to win this on his own,” Leamer further explained. “The second thing is, his mother ran for the Senate, or started to run for the Senate, and when she got out of her private life and she saw the questions journalists asked … she backed out.”
In late 2008, Schlossberg’s mother, Caroline Kennedy, 67, toyed with a run for a Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton, but ultimately backed off weeks later.
Nadler, 78, who is rooting for his protege, New York State assemblyman Micah Lasher, 43, previously dissed the prospect of a Schlossberg run back in September.
“Well, there’s nothing particularly good or bad about a Kennedy holding my seat. But the Kennedy, unlike Schlossberg, should be somebody with a record of public service, a record of public accomplishment, and he doesn’t have one,” Nadler told CNN at the time.
“He certainly is not going to be a major candidate. There will be major candidates,” Nadler added.
