Joseph P. Kennedy II

Joseph Patrick Kennedy II (born September 24, 1952) is an American businessman, Democratic politician, and a member of the Kennedy family. He is the eldest son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and a nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. He is also the older brother of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 8th congressional district of Massachusetts from 1987 to 1999. In 1979 he founded and, until he was elected to the U.S. House, led Citizens Energy Corporation, a nonprofit energy company that provides heating oil to low-income and elderly families in Massachusetts.

Kennedy was born in the Brighton section of Boston on September 24, 1952. He was the second of 11 children to Ethel (née Skakel) and Robert F. Kennedy. He was named after his grandfather Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the patriarch of the Kennedy family, and his uncle Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who was killed in an airplane crash in 1944 during World War II. He is the eldest grandson of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Kennedy spent his childhood between the family's homes in McLean, Virginia, and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Kennedy had a troubled youth and was expelled from several private schools as a result of his quick temper. He regularly got into fights with his younger brothers and male cousins. He was 15 when his father was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel. That night, Kennedy and two of his siblings, Kathleen and Robert Jr., were flying to Los Angeles aboard one of the planes in the Secret Service's presidential fleet.

While on hiatus from college, Kennedy worked for several months as part of a federally funded program to combat and treat tuberculosis in San Francisco's African American community. Mayor Joseph Alioto personally praised Kennedy's work in the community. Kennedy resigned from his position in the program and returned to Massachusetts in the summer of 1973.

In 1979, Kennedy founded Citizens Energy Corporation, a nonprofit organization to provide discounted heating oil to low-income and elderly families in Massachusetts. According to author J. Randy Taraborrelli, Kennedy started the venture "to alleviate the burden of heating bills for the poor during the oil crisis of that year". By 1984, Citizens Energy helped provide low-cost heat for 250,000 families. In 2010, Kennedy transformed the organization to become a leader in renewable energy generation while continuing to use profits to provide energy savings to low-income families.

In 1986, incumbent Democrat and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, who had held the seat for Massachusetts's 8th congressional district (a Democratic stronghold in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts) since 1953, announced his retirement. Kennedy ran for the seat, which his uncle John F. Kennedy had held from 1947 to 1953. The Democratic nomination was contested by several well-known Democrats, including state senator George Bachrach and state representative Mel King. Kennedy was endorsed by The Boston Globe and by O'Neill. He won the primary with 53% of the vote, and the general election with 72%. He was reelected in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996.

Kennedy's legislative efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives included:

Expanding the availability of credit to working Americans to buy homes and to open businesses.

Requiring public disclosure of bank-lending practices in poorer neighborhoods and disclosure of bank home-mortgage approvals and refusals by race, sex, and income. Subsequent Federal Reserve Board studies based on these newly required disclosures found widespread evidence of discriminatory-loan practices. One study found that white borrowers in the lowest-income category were approved for mortgages more than African American borrowers in the highest-income category. Data from Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis found that African Americans were turned down at three times the rate of whites.

Helping create hundreds of thousands of new affordable-housing units nationwide by introducing tax credits to stimulate private investment in neighborhood housing developments after federal housing assistance had been cut by 75% during the 1980s.

After leaving the House of Representatives, Kennedy returned to Citizens Energy. (During Kennedy's terms in the House, it had been run by his brother Michael.) Citizens Energy pursues commercial ventures aimed at generating revenues that, in turn, are used to generate funds that could assist those in need in the U.S. and abroad. It grew to encompass seven separate companies, including one of the largest energy-conservation firms in the U.S. Citizens Energy became one of the first U.S. energy firms to move large volumes of natural gas to more than 30 states. As a precursor to market changes under electricity deregulation in the late 1990s, Citizens Energy was a pioneer in moving and marketing electrical power over the power grid. In recent years, Kennedy has led the company into the renewable-energy industry, building solar farms along the East Coast and transmission lines to support charitable programs like one giving free solar panels to low-income families in California. In 2019, Citizens Energy announced the completion of one of the largest Low-Income Community Shared Solar projects in the country, funded by its investment in the Sunrise PowerLink Transmission line. Totaling 30 megawatts, the project will provide $500 in energy savings to 12,000 low-income families annually.

Since returning to Citizens Energy, Kennedy has sought to influence energy-related public policy, challenging the Bush administration to invest in energy conservation and efficiency and renewable energy, encouraging Congress to fully fund federal heating assistance programs, proposing that oil-consuming countries work together to balance oil prices against OPEC manipulation, and calling for the federal government and major oil companies to use portions of royalties from oil and gas extracted from federal lands and waters to help low-income families with the high price of energy. Kennedy has been criticized for the salaries paid to himself and his wife. In 2012, as CEO of Citizens Energy and related organizations, he received $796,000 in compensation, and his wife received $344,000 as Director of Marketing.

Beginning in 2005, Citgo Petroleum Company (Citgo), a wholly owned subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)—the Venezuelan state-owned oil company—has been Citizens Energy's primary donor of heating oil. The Wall Street Journal and others criticized Citizens Energy for continuing its relationship with the Venezuelan government and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, a harsh critic of the United States. In response, Kennedy and others argued that it is hypocritical to criticize a nonprofit organization for accepting oil from Venezuela while numerous U.S. businesses profit from robust trade with Venezuela and when the U.S. government has cut low-income fuel assistance.

Although Citgo donations reportedly dried up in 2015 owing to Venezuela's economic turmoil, the company was reported in 2009 to have donated 83 million gallons of oil over the two previous years, which was used to provide heating assistance to an estimated 200,000 families a year in 23 states.

Kennedy later became a critic of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's handpicked successor, accusing him of "stealing democracy from the people" and calling for his removal.

In 1993, a Boston Globe poll showed Kennedy within one percentage point of popular incumbent William Weld in a hypothetical gubernatorial match-up, prompting prominent state Democrats to try to recruit him for the race. Though no other Democrat was polling near Weld, Kennedy decided to forgo the race and remain in Congress. Mark Roosevelt won the nomination and lost to Weld by over 40 points.

Kennedy was considered the front-runner for the governorship of Massachusetts in 1998, but revelations about his personal life led to a tumultuous fall in public opinion polling, and he decided not to run. At a VFW hall in a working-class area of Boston, he said he believed the campaign would not focus on policy: "The race will focus on personal or family questions. It is not fair to my family, it is not fair to the people of Massachusetts, and it is not the right thing to do."

After his uncle Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009, Kennedy was mentioned as a possible candidate for his uncle's United States Senate seat. In an Associated Press article, Democratic strategist Dan Payne said, "He wouldn't be human and he wouldn't be a Kennedy if he didn't give serious consideration to running for what is known as the 'Kennedy seat' in Massachusetts." On September 7, Kennedy announced that he would not pursue the seat. The seat eventually went by appointment to Paul G. Kirk and later by election to Republican Scott Brown.

Kennedy endorsed incumbent Democrat Joe Biden's reelection campaign in the 2024 United States presidential election over a third-party/independent challenge by his brother Robert Jr.

On February 22, 1972, Kennedy was on Lufthansa Flight 649 when it was hijacked. Shortly after the inflight movie began during the flight from New Delhi to Athens, five gunmen seized the jet and forced it to land at Aden International Airport, where all hostages were released the next day.

In August 1973, a Jeep Kennedy was driving recklessly on Nantucket overturned, fracturing a vertebra of his brother David and permanently paralyzing David's girlfriend, Pamela Kelley, from the chest down. According to her sister Karen, Kelley was told she would never have children and would likely die by age 40.