Kautzman's AP GO PO Blog

Ms. Kennedy ended weeks of silence with a series of rapid-fire phone calls to the state’s leading political figures, including Gov. David A. Paterson, in which she emphatically and enthusiastically declared herself interested in the seat, according to several people who received the calls.

“She told me she was interested in the position,” Mr. Paterson said at a news conference outside Albany on Monday. He added, “She’d like at some point to sit down and tell me what she thinks her qualifications are.”

The governor, who has sole authority to fill the Senate vacancy, insisted that he had not yet chosen a successor to Mrs. Clinton and said that Monday’s conversation with Ms. Kennedy was the first he had had with her since an initial discussion almost two weeks ago.

But several people who have counseled the governor on the pending vacancy said that Ms. Kennedy has emerged as a clear front-runner, if she proves able to withstand the intense scrutiny and criticism that her decision to seek the seat is likely to provoke.

Still, some have questioned whether Ms. Kennedy is qualified for the job.

Ms. Kennedy is now launching a public effort to demonstrate that she has both the ability and the stomach to perform the job, with plans to visit parts of the upstate region. The governor, who has expressed frustration with other elected officials for campaigning too openly, has done nothing to discourage her, said a person who has spoken with Ms. Kennedy.

In addition, a person with direct knowledge of the conversations said that Ms. Kennedy and Mr. Paterson had spoken several times in recent days and that the governor had grown increasingly fond of her. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor, said that Mr. Paterson also had come to see Ms. Kennedy as a strong potential candidate whose appointment would keep a woman in the seat and whose personal connections would allow her to raise the roughly $70 million required to hold on to the seat in the coming years.

Under state law, Ms. Kennedy would have to run and win in 2010, to finish out the last two years of Mrs. Clinton’s term, and again in 2012, to win a term of her own.

Another person who had advised Mr. Paterson said that Ms. Kennedy could offer political advantages to the governor, who was elevated to his position after Eliot Spitzer resigned in March and in two years must ask voters to actually elect him as governor.

“The upside of her candidacy is that the 2010 ballot will read Kennedy – Paterson,” said one of those advisers, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the governor’s thinking. “David craves national attention and money. If you connect the dots, it leads to her.”

For Ms. Kennedy, an appointment to the Senate would open a historic and exceedingly high-profile chapter to a life largely shielded from public view, and comes at a poignant time for her personally.

Her uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, is struggling with terminal brain cancer, and his illness has forced members of his extended family to contemplate the possibility that the Senate could be left without a Kennedy for the first time in a half century. Mr. Kennedy has encouraged his niece, to whom he talks nearly every day, to pursue Mrs. Clinton’s seat, a spokesman for the senator, Anthony Coley, said. Associates of the senator say he has made it clear he would not pressure her to do so. Still, they said nothing would make him happier or prouder than having his niece in the Senate, which — far more than the White House — has been the core of the family’s long record of public service.

Other members of the family, especially her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have also strongly encouraged Ms. Kennedy, who, if she were appointed, would become the first woman to lead the Kennedy dynasty, whose most successful and visible members have been men. Her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, had once been urged to run for the seat, which was held by their uncle, Robert F. Kennedy.

Ms. Kennedy, who initially seemed taken aback by questions about whether she would be interested in the position, has grown increasingly excited about and focused on the opportunity in recent days, those who have talked to her said. She has moved aggressively into campaignlike mode, albeit with careful attention to political protocol.

On Monday, she called dozens of political figures to let them know she was interested in the job. Besides Mr. Paterson and Christine C. Quinn, the New York City Council speaker, Ms. Kennedy called upstate officials like Representative Louise M. Slaughter and Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo; the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader; and Charles E. Schumer, New York’s senior senator.

(One name who may or may not have been on the list: Mrs. Clinton. Through spokesmen, Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Kennedy declined to say whether or not they had spoken. While Mrs. Clinton has said that she would leave the decision to Mr. Paterson, some officials close to her have publicly questioned Ms. Kennedy’s credentials for the job.)

Moreover, friends said, Ms. Kennedy, whose own mother assiduously shielded her from scrutiny when she was young, has become less worried about subjecting her three children to the spotlight now that they have grown older. Ms. Kennedy’s two daughters — Rose, 20, and Tatiana, 18 — are in college. Her son, John, turns 16 next month.

“The kids are a big part of it. But part of it is she knows she can really do a great job at this,” said Ellen Alderman, a law school classmate of Ms. Kennedy and her co-author on two books.

Ms. Kennedy has also retained Knickerbocker SKD, a well-connected political consulting firm founded by Josh Isay, a former chief of staff to Mr. Schumer. The firm counts among its clients Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Ms. Quinn, and Mr. Brown, and enjoys close ties with some of New York’s powerful labor unions. Several of those called by Ms. Kennedy said that she had not asked for their endorsement, but merely expressed her interest in the job and willingness to earn it. Those discussions seemed intended to soothe some of the feathers already ruffled among the many elected officials, including some in New York’s Congressional delegation, who are seeking the seat.

“What we need, obviously, is someone of great stature to follow Hillary Clinton,” said Ms. Slaughter, who said she would support Ms. Kennedy’s bid for the office.

And, in a move that carries an unmistakable echo of the “listening tour” that jump-started Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy in 2000, Ms. Kennedy has made plans to visit parts of upstate New York, where she is perhaps least well known, and where her candidacy may draw the most skepticism.

Mr. Brown said that he expected to meet with her in western New York in the coming weeks.

“She wanted a lay of the land, she wanted to talk about some of the issues that are important to people from Buffalo and upstate,” Mr. Brown said.

Some friends said that they saw Ms. Kennedy’s interest in the seat as part of an evolution in recent years, one that has seen her grow more comfortable with the spotlight. In recent years, she helped raise millions of dollars for New York City schools. She also spent weeks campaigning for Barack Obama on the presidential campaign trail this year, an experience that friends say left her with a greater appetite for public life.

“I think what she learned from it was that she found it to be work that she liked and was excited about and it got her blood flowing,” said Joel I. Klein, chancellor of New York’s public schools.

Though Ms. Kennedy’s interest in the seat has already garnered enormous attention, several other elected officials who have expressed interest in the job said privately on Monday that they would continue to seek it.

And even if Ms. Kennedy does win the nod from Mr. Paterson, she will eventually face a much broader and tougher audience: New York voters, who expressed excitement, skepticism and every emotion in between as word of Ms. Kennedy’s decision spread.

Shannon R. Berkowsky, a teacher from Ms. Kennedy’s neighborhood on the Upper East Side, noted that Ms. Kennedy’s positions on many issues were all but unknown, unlike those of many elected officials who have expressed interest in the seat.

“There are people who have worked hard their whole lives for the greater good who don’t have the name, and should they be passed over?” Ms. Berkowsky said.

But Marie Owen, 69, a flute player who lives on the Upper West Side, expressed admiration for Ms. Kennedy.

“I somehow can’t see her as being corrupt. It’s not her legacy,” she said. “I kind of like the idea, maybe because I’m old.”