Kennedy, Joseph Patrick, III (1980-…), served as a United States congressman from 2013 to 2021. Kennedy, a Democrat, represented a Massachusetts district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Kennedy is a member of the famous Kennedy political family. Robert F. Kennedy, a former U.S. senator and attorney general, was his grandfather. John F. Kennedy, a former U.S. president, was his great-uncle.
Kennedy is often referred to as Joe Kennedy III. He was born on Oct. 4, 1980, in Brighton, a neighborhood in western Boston, Massachusetts. He is the younger of twins; his brother Matthew is a few minutes older. Kennedy’s parents were Sheila Rauch Kennedy and six-time U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy II. Kennedy III attended Stanford University, where he played lacrosse and studied management science and engineering. He graduated in 2003. From 2004 to 2006, Kennedy served in the Dominican Republic as a member of the Peace Corps. He attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 2009.
Kennedy then joined the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office in southeastern Massachusetts. He worked for the district attorney’s office in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, for several months before leaving to explore a political career. In 2012, Kennedy won election to represent Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District in the U.S. House. The district stretches from the suburbs west of Boston into southern Massachusetts. Kennedy succeeded the retiring Representative Barney Frank, a fellow Democrat. Kennedy was reelected in 2014, 2016, and 2018.
Kennedy regularly spoke in favor of gun control, protecting the environment, safeguarding the Affordable Care Act, and shielding from deportation the undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers.” In 2018, Democratic leaders chose Kennedy to deliver the party’s response to President Donald J. Trump’s first State of the Union address. In 2020, Kennedy sought his party’s nomination for U.S. senator. In September, Senator Ed Markey, the incumbent, defeated Kennedy in the state’s Democratic primary. After leaving Congress in 2021, Kennedy became a political commentator. In 2022, President Joe Biden named Kennedy as the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland for economic affairs.
