(Reuters) -Jack Schlossberg, grandson of the 35th U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, plans to run for Congress next year, continuing the legacy of one of America’s most storied political families.
Schlossberg said on Tuesday night he was joining the Democratic Party primary race for the Manhattan seat in the U.S. House of Representatives being vacated by retiring Democrat Jerry Nadler.
“It’s a crisis at every level”, Schlossberg said in a video where he criticized Republican President Donald Trump. “It’s a constitutional crisis with one dangerous man in control of all three branches of government.
“He’s stripping citizens of their civil rights and silencing his critics.”
Schlossberg, 32, son of JFK’s daughter and former diplomat Caroline Kennedy and the designer-artist Edwin Schlossberg, first shared the news of his first bid for public office in an email to supporters, the New York Times reported.
Touching on his famous ancestry, Schlossberg noted on his campaign website that he was inspired by the example set by his family and the city that shaped him. He described himself as born and raised in New York City, where he took the bus to school every day.
Schlossberg cited historic cuts to social programs including health care, education and child care under the Trump administration and stressed the importance of Democrats retaking control of Congress.
“With control of Congress, there’s nothing we can’t do. Without it, we’re helpless to a third term,” he said in the video.
A political commentator and writer whose work has been published in such news outlets as The Washington Post, Politico and Time magazine, Schlossberg joins a crowded field of contenders already vying for the 12th Congressional District seat.
Nadler, 78, said in September that he was retiring next year after more than 30 years in House, acknowledging a widespread clamor within the party to make way for a younger generation of leaders.
Schlossberg’s decision comes as Democrats are hoping to regain control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections and thus a measure of legislative clout they currently lack in opposing the agenda of Trump.
The only grandson of JFK, who was assassinated in 1963, Schlossberg grabbed a moment in the Democratic spotlight at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he gave a speech endorsing then-Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for president.
Some of Schlossberg’s critiques as a commentator have targeted his cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whom Trump appointed as secretary of health and human services despite his vaccine skepticism and propagation of health policies at odds with science and the medical mainstream.
Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy, who served as U.S. attorney general under JFK before he was elected to a U.S. Senate seat in New York, was himself assassinated in 1968 just after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California.
Schlossberg’s entry into congressional politics follows the meteoric rise of another younger New York millennial, Zohran Mamdani, 34, the state assemblyman who was elected last week as mayor of New York City.
Like Mamdani, Schlossberg is known for his social media savvy, with more than 830,000 followers on TikTok, according to the Times.
“If Zohran Mamdani and I have anything in common, it’s that we are both trying to be authentic versions of ourselves and meet people where they are and communicate with people in New York City and be present and show up for people,” Schlossberg told the Times.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Maiya Keidan in Toronto; Editing by Saad Sayeed and Doina Chiacu)
Comments