Chappaquiddick Scandal
The Chappaquiddick Scandal refers to a tragic incident that occurred on July 18, 1969, involving Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne, a young woman who had worked on his late brother Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign. After attending a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Kennedy left with Kopechne, and their car drove off Dike Bridge, resulting in Kopechne's drowning while Kennedy escaped. The circumstances surrounding the accident became contentious, particularly regarding Kennedy's actions after the crash, including a delay of nearly ten hours before he reported the incident to authorities.
Kennedy's admission of guilt for leaving the scene led to a suspended sentence, but the incident severely impacted his political career, preventing his aspirations for the presidency. The scandal raised numerous questions and fueled speculation, as the public sought clarity on his motivations and actions that night. Despite attempts to move past the incident, the legacy of Chappaquiddick continued to haunt Kennedy throughout his career, influencing his political trajectory for decades. The event remains a subject of considerable analysis and debate regarding accountability and the implications of privilege in political contexts.
Chappaquiddick Scandal
Date: July 18-19, 1969
The most infamous traffic fatality of the 1960’s. When Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy’s car plunged off the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, Kennedy’s unsatisfactory explanations of the event effectively ruined his chances to be elected president of the United States.
Origins and History
After the assassinations of his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy became the final hope for the continuation of a Kennedy family “dynasty.” The Kennedy mystique remained so strong in 1969 that the presidency was widely thought to be the senator’s to lose. On the weekend of July 18-19, a group of workers from Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign held a reunion barbecue at a small rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island in conjunction with the Edgartown Regatta. The party was attended by Senator Kennedy; his cousin, Joe Gargan; lawyer Paul Markham; Kennedy’s part-time chauffeur, John Crimmins; and two other Kennedy campaign aides. Joining them were six young women, referred to as the “boiler room girls,” who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign.
The Accident
On the afternoon of July 18, Senator Kennedy arrived in Edgartown to take part in the regatta and to attend the party on Chappaquiddick Island, accessible from Edgartown by ferry. At some point, probably between 11:00 p.m. and midnight, Kennedy left the party with Mary Jo Kopechne, one of the “boiler room girls.” By his own account, Kennedy had several alcoholic drinks during the course of his day, but he claimed not to be impaired in any way. What happened between the time the couple left the party and the next morning at 9:45 when Kennedy reported the accident and made a statement to the local police has been subject to much speculation.
Sometime during that night, the 1967 Oldsmobile in which Kennedy and Kopechne left the party plunged off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Senator Kennedy managed to escape from the submerged car, but Kopechne did not. According to Kennedy, he took a wrong turn on his way back to the ferry to Edgartown and drove off the Dike Bridge. He somehow managed to free himself from the car (although he claims not to remember how this happened) and then dove back into the water several times in an unsuccessful attempt to save Kopechne. When his efforts failed, he returned to the party to enlist the help of Gargan and Markham, but they were equally unsuccessful. After failing at these efforts, Kennedy, who claims to have been in a state of shock, dove into the water and swam back to Edgartown and returned to his hotel room. In the morning, he first called a family legal adviser and then reported the accident to local police, who had already found the car and Kopechne’s body.
Kopechne was buried three days later without an autopsy, and on July 25, Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence. On the same day, he gave a poorly received nationally televised speech in which he admitted that his behavior in not immediately reporting the accident was indefensible, although he did not adequately explain his actions on that night. On July 31, he returned to his duties in the United States Senate, and on the same day, District Attorney Edmund S. Dinis requested a formal inquest into Kopechne’s death. The inquest was closed to both the press and the public, no indictment was returned, and the case was closed.
Many unanswered questions lingered long after the accident, effectively extinguishing Kennedy’s presidential aspirations. Kennedy’s inability to convincingly explain his reason for waiting ten hours to report the accident to the local authorities opened the door to the suspicion that he was more concerned with covering up his involvement in the accident than in saving a young woman’s life. Speculation also centered on rumors that Kennedy asked his cousin, Gargan, to shoulder the blame for the accident or that Kennedy wanted to claim that Kopechne was driving the car. His failure to stop at a nearby cottage to seek help or telephone the authorities also was never adequately explained. Because Kennedy provided so few believable details of that evening’s events, the incident has been fertile territory for “conspiracy” theorists and amateur sleuths.
Impact
The impact of the Chappaquiddick incident on Kennedy’s political career was enormous. The most immediate consequence was his defeat as Senate majority whip in January of 1971, but a more lasting consequence was his failure to gain his party’s nomination for president. The accident was still too fresh in the minds of the voting public for Kennedy to run for the nomination in 1972, but his advisers felt that by 1976, all would be forgotten. In fact, as time went on, the public seemed only to have more questions regarding Kennedy’s role in Kopechne’s death and his behavior after the accident.
Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, but even after a decade, the legacy of Chappaquiddick haunted him, and he was defeated. Finally, in 1985, he and his advisers came to the conclusion that they could never escape the unanswered questions of Chappaquiddick, and Kennedy announced that he would not run for the presidency in 1988.
Additional Information
The Bridge at Chappaquiddick (1969), by Jack Olson, was the first book written about the accident and is a thorough report of events with no particular bias. The Last Kennedy (1975), by Robert Sherrill, is a very hard-hitting investigation of the events of that night in 1969, tracking down, for instance, the rumor that Gargan was supposed to have taken the blame for Kennedy. In Leo Damore’s Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-up, published in 1988, twenty years after the accident, several participants in the events, including Gargan, speak up for the first time. In Damore’s account, Gargan claims that Kennedy tried to get him to take the blame for the accident.