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Kennedy's staff is regarded in the Senate as first rate. He has about 100 people working for him, which makes his staff about the same size as those of other committee chairmen. Generally in their 20s and 30s, his aides are exceedingly loyal and enthusiastic, and heartily disliked by colleagues on Capitol Hill for always putting Kennedy's interests first. Unlike most Senate staffs, Kennedy has no office manager. The senior men report directly to Kennedy. The most important aide is ten-year veteran Carey Parker, 44, Kennedy's balding, warmly humorous chief legislative assistant. The other top aides include Stephen Breyer, 41, who took a leave from his professorship at Harvard Law School to serve as chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee; Lawrence Horowitz, 34, a physician and top staffer on Kennedy's health subcommittee; and Richard E.
Burke, 26, the Senator's administrative assistant. There are only men at the top level of Kennedy's staff; women work in subordinate jobs. Aides have urged him to put women in senior positions, but he has not done so.
For the most part, Kennedy's campaign will be led by a different cast of characters. The overall direction is in the hands of Kirk, who served as Kennedy's top Senate aide for eight years. He is one of Kennedy's closest political cronies and one of the ablest political strategists in the country. Rick Stearns, 35, a former assistant district attorney in Massachusetts, who was a strategist for George McGovern in 1972, will be the campaign's delegate hunter, trying to fill the Kennedy slates. Carl Wagner, 34, who was Kirk's successor on Kennedy's Senate staff, will fly around the country, setting up campaign committees. Only a few of the draft-Kennedy volunteers will be taken on. In Kennedy's view, goodwilled, enthusiastic amateurs are fine for leafleting and doorbell ringing, but the running of campaigns must be left to professionals.
Most public opinion analysts suspect that Kennedy's popularity may already have peaked, that it is the mythic Ted Kennedy who leads Carter 2 to 1. Says Pollster Field: "His popularity is like a great reservoir that is filled to the brim.
He can't use much more support; it would just slop over. The question is how much of that reservoir will he have to draw down?"
Down it doubtless will go as Kennedy is forced to take more specific stands on issues about which he so far has been vague. Says New York Democrat Howard Samuels, a Carter supporter: "So far, Kennedy has been getting a free ride. He is carrying on his shoulders the uncompleted agendas of a collection of specific interest groups—blacks, the young, the poor, the working class. He can't satisfy them all."
Kennedy feels he can make the question of leadership more important than any single issue, and quite a few politicians agree. Argues Democratic Senator Gary Hart of Colorado: "The nation is looking for a politician of stature, perhaps as a substitute for solutions."