1. Joseph Kennedy III was born on Oct. 4, 1980, in Brighton, Massachusetts, the son of former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II and Sheila Rauch Kennedy and the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, the former senator and attorney general. President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy were his great uncles. He is the only member of his family currently serving in federal office. One of his cousins currently serves in the Connecticut Senate.
2. Kennedy has a twin brother, Matthew, who is eight minutes older. Matthew Kennedy founded an international business development consulting firm and served in various government offices during the Obama administration, including at the White House and the departments of Commerce and Treasury.
3. Kennedy, along with his brother, attended Stanford University, graduating in 2003. He majored in management science and engineering and played lacrosse.
4. Kennedy joined the Peace Corps in 2004, serving for two years in the Dominican Republic. While there, he worked with local tour guides to negotiate for higher wages. He also worked as an anti-poverty consultant for the government of East Timor and as an analyst for the United Nations Millennium Project.
5. Kennedy enrolled at Harvard Law School in 2006. While he was a student, he co-founded an empowerment program for at-risk teens in Jamaica Plain, an inner-city Boston neighborhood, and worked with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau helping low-income tenants who faced eviction during the foreclosure crisis that began in 2008.
6. Upon graduating in 2009, Kennedy was hired as an assistant prosecutor at the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office. He moved to the DA’s office in Middlesex County, where he remained for four months before leaving to explore a run for office.
7. Kennedy in 2012 married Lauren Anne Birchfield. The couple met in a class at Harvard taught by Elizabeth Warren, who would go on to become senator from Massachusetts. They welcomed daughter Eleanor in 2015 and son James in December 2017. She is a health care policy lawyer and serves as the senior counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families.
8. Kennedy ran to replace retiring Rep. Barney Frank in 2012, winning 90 percent of the Democratic primary vote and defeating Republican Sean Bielat, 61 percent to 36 percent in the general election. He ran unopposed in 2014 and defeated his Republican challenger in 2016 by more than 40 points.
9. Kennedy kept a low profile for most of his first several years in Congress but has emerged as a vocal defender of former President Barack Obama’s legacy since President Donald Trump took office, delivering a series of speeches on Obama’s health care law and attacking the president’s response to white nationalist participants at a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia.
10. Kennedy was selected by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California to deliver the response to Trump’s first State of the Union address in January 2018.
