JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg attempts to continue family legacy in entering race for Congress

Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former president John F Kennedy, has announced his intention to run for Congress, continuing the legacy of one of America’s most storied political families.

Schlossberg, 32, trailed the announcement in an email to supporters Tuesday and subsequently published a video on Instagram in which he said: “Two hundred and fifty years after America was founded, and our country is at a turning point.

“It’s a crisis at every level. A cost of living crisis sponsored by the Big Beautiful Bill. Historic cuts to social programs working families rely on. Healthcare, education, childcare. It’s a corruption crisis. The president has made almost a billion dollars this year. He’s picking winners and losers from inside the Oval Office. It’s cronyism, not capitalism.

“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… We deserve better, and we can do better, and it starts with the Democratic Party winning back control of the House of Representatives.”

The son of JFK’s daughter and former U.S. ambassador Caroline Kennedy and the designer-artist Edwin Schlossberg, the candidate will run for New York’s 12th congressional district seat, an affluent Manhattan constituency being vacated by Rep. Jerry Nadler, retiring at 78 after three decades of public service.

JFK, the 35th president, was assassinated in 1963. His brother Robert F Kennedy, who had served as his attorney general, was murdered in turn while running for the Democratic presidential nomination shortly after winning the California primary in 1968. Their other brother, Ted Kennedy, served as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1962 until his death in 2009. Several other members of the clan have since held political office, most recently ex-congressman Joe Kennedy III.

Schlossberg is a Yale graduate with master’s and law degrees from Harvard. He has little professional experience but has tried his hand at political journalism, seeing articles published in The Washington Post, Politico and Time and working as a correspondent on the 2024 presidential election for Vogue.com. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during the campaign and endorsed Kamala Harris.

He is arguably best known as a social media influencer, with more than 830,000 followers on TikTok and around 172,000 followers on X, and as a vocal critic of President Donald Trump and his own relative, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s controversial health secretary.

Schlossberg has previously called RFK Jr “an embarrassment” and accused him of “trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories and conflict for personal gain and fame” and, on another occasion, of being a Russian spy.

He has positioned himself as a custodian of their shared family legacy and, most recently, attacked Trump for bulldozing the White House Rose Garden created by former first lady Jackie Kennedy, writing scathingly on Instagram: “My grandmother saw America in full color – Trump sees black and white. Where she planted flowers, he poured concrete.”

Schlossberg’s decision to run comes as Democrats are hoping to regain control of the House of Representatives in next year’s midterms, a campaign given momentum by a slate of election wins last week that saw them win gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia and Zohran Mamdani named New York City’s mayor-elect.

Speaking to The New York Times on Tuesday, prior to his formal announcement, Schlossberg said: “There is nothing our party can’t do to address costs of living, corruption, and the constitutional crisis that we’re in. But without the control of Congress, there’s almost nothing that we can do.”

The candidate downplayed the significance of his youth by saying, “I also bring two years now of experience in a toxic and polluted media environment where, unlike a lot of people, I know how to breathe that air. I think that this district needs somebody who knows how to fight back effectively in this new political era that we’re living in.”

On the inevitable comparisons with Mamdani, Schlossberg said: “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. The only race I know how to run is my own.”