2026-06-22T09:00:26.098Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
- 肯尼迪总统的外孙杰克·施洛斯伯格将于周二参加曼哈顿国会选区民主党初选，这场竞选对他而言异常艰难。
- 这位33岁的年轻人曾希望凭借显赫的家族血统和社交媒体粉丝基础，与疏离政治的选民建立联结。
- 但他的竞选活动遭遇多重挑战：团队成员离职、政策立场摇摆，以及外界对其从政资历的质疑。
本文为AI生成的新闻摘要，经CNN编辑审核。
肯尼迪家族还能从政治中学到什么？
对于将在周二民主党初选中亮相的杰克·肯尼迪·施洛斯伯格而言，答案是：几乎方方面面。
纽约市老牌政党政治究竟有多残酷。媒体会如何将你彻底批倒。家族人脉能带你走多远，又会在何处止步。在试图将失利与痛苦深藏心底的同时，要在镜头前保持灿烂笑容和标志性双拇指点赞有多难。而他的种种失误，让多少人看得津津有味。
“我们民主党就是不擅长传递我们的主张——这固然不是全部，但却是关键一环。所有人都说，是时候迎来新一代了……民主党必须学会用不同方式行事——可真有人这么做了，他们又不乐意了，”施洛斯伯格坐在哥伦布大道上重开的H&H百吉饼店内，努力维持着乐观情绪，对CNN记者说道。
施洛斯伯格竞选代表曼哈顿大部分地区进入国会的核心理念是：在注意力经济时代，一个能迅速凭借家族背景收获海量线上粉丝、并成为上届民主党全国代表大会明星的年轻人，可以打动那些认为政治毫无意义、领导人一无是处的选民。
但如果多项民调结果以及协助他的友人的担忧成真，施洛斯伯格不仅可能面临选民的否决，还可能让整个肯尼迪家族以及仍对其抱有期待的支持者失望。
他仍有可能在这场需获得相对多数即可胜出的第12选区八人竞选中脱颖而出。但施洛斯伯格并未为“新 Camelot 王朝继承人”的登场做准备，而是在竞选最后几天谈论他认为用来在网上发布恶意评论的水军机器人，同时让盟友在对手的竞选海报周围张贴“警惕卖国贼 ↑”的标语。
CNN采访了施洛斯伯格及其多位友人、捐赠者，以及直言不讳的对手。有消息人士透露，对手称他几乎从未开展竞选活动；他在宣布参选时甚至不知道纽约市的排序选择投票制度不适用于国会选区选举；他在X平台和线下都曾对竞争对手的顾问以及他认定的虚伪之辈大发雷霆。
上周在曼哈顿上西区的街角与选民交谈时，即将退休的众议员杰里·纳德勒打断了施洛斯伯格对CNN的回答，称他是“一个没有任何资历、毫无背景的人，竟也敢参选”。
纳德勒还指出，前众议院议长南希·佩洛西——这位与肯尼迪家族交好多年的人士——在背书施洛斯伯格参选他的席位时，并未提前告知他。
友人惋惜道，如果当初有人懂得如何把控施洛斯伯格的魅力与天赋，这场竞选本可以走向不同的结果。不过他们也承认，施洛斯伯格本人往往难以被管束。例如，要预约采访他，请求必须先提交给他的私人助理——因为在竞选开始几周后，他就解雇了包括新闻秘书在内的传统专职团队。
“我觉得人们无法接受，我可能是一个聪明、勤奋且真正努力的人，不知为何，这一点在有些人看来根本不可接受，”施洛斯伯格对CNN说，“所以他们必须说我疯了，说我完全无法正常工作，说我总在睡觉——毕竟在他们眼里，只有被支持者认可且认真对待的人，才是真实的。而我们的支持者，都是铁杆粉丝。”
他提到的“总在睡觉”，源于《纽约时报》5月一篇极具杀伤力的报道：施洛斯伯格在筹备竞选启动当天，突然告诉助手他必须回家睡觉。
他后来对友人透露并向CNN重申，11月12日那天，他其实是要去见妹妹塔蒂亚娜·施洛斯伯格——当时她尚未公开自己罹患晚期白血病的诊断结果——而且他不信任身边的新员工，担心他们会泄露消息。塔蒂亚娜·施洛斯伯格在《纽约客》上披露病情的文章发表于11月22日，她于12月30日去世。
现年33岁的施洛斯伯格从未见过外祖父约翰·F·肯尼迪总统。他还记得与外形酷似外祖父的舅舅小约翰·肯尼迪的早期记忆。小约翰·肯尼迪至今仍是大众热议的对象，Hulu剧集《爱情故事》正是以他为主题，该剧近日刚播出，距离27年前导致他遇难的空难已过去近27年，肯尼迪家族称该剧对他们的刻画令人不适。
施洛斯伯格与母亲卡罗琳·肯尼迪关系极为亲密——他的笑声与母亲如出一辙，在政坛上既像圈内人又带着局外人的局促，同时也继承了母亲对家族遗产不愿示人的保护欲。他还借助母亲的人脉网络，获得了早期捐赠者的支持。
通过父亲埃德温·施洛斯伯格获得犹太血统的施洛斯伯格，似乎完美适配这个拥有全美最大犹太人口之一的选区。
这里是曼哈顿，民主党哪里出了问题会在杂货店和社交筹款活动中被反复讨论，少女会在人行道上找施洛斯伯格合影，上周还有一位年长女性在街角与他聊了十分钟，称他的家族体现了天主教徒向上流动的理想。
数百人聚集在肯尼迪中心外，见证唐纳德·特朗普总统的名字从大楼上被移除——因为他试图将自己与该中心的遗产绑定——当晚，施洛斯伯格在选区内举办了一场舞会，特邀嘉宾是通过父母结识的大卫·莱特曼。
他仍在努力争取发表一篇为自己辩护的评论文章，回击罗恩·克莱因——这位前白宫幕僚长曾是他在哈佛法学院的恩师，对他影响深远。
施洛斯伯格表示，近年来他总被问及罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr.参选总统后又获特朗普内阁任命一事，或是特朗普试图更名肯尼迪中心、解密肯尼迪遇刺相关文件的举动。他认为这为自己提供了平台，决定加以利用。
“我可不是突然说‘哦，我这辈子都没在意过政治，现在想试试了’。事实是，‘不，这一切都正在发生，且至关重要。我出生在这样的环境中，我真的、真的很在乎，也了解我们家族的历史，了解我们政党的历史’，”他说。
他的竞选网站运用了肯尼迪风格的标志性元素，提出了多项政策主张，比如将房租按抵押贷款计算并纳入联邦所得税抵扣范围，或要求政治行动委员会（PAC）退出政治竞选。
但在施洛斯伯格看来，这些政策主张远不如他认为凭借姓名和社交媒体粉丝基础所能做到的事情重要。他辩称，自己能在任何议题上打破僵局。或者正如两位转为顾问的友人对CNN所说，也得到了施洛斯伯格的认同：特朗普永远不会知道或在意其他候选人是谁。（长期支持共和党、后来转为特朗普反对者的乔治·康威也在同一场初选中提出了类似观点。）
79岁的纳德勒支持州众议员迈卡·拉舍——这位议员自25年前担任纳德勒的实习生以来，一直在竞选和政府岗位上逐步成长。
纳德勒告诉CNN，他“在决定不参选的那一刻就知道会支持拉舍”——而他决定不参选的原因之一，就是他相信拉舍能延续他的工作。
在纳德勒的背书下，拉舍获得了众多当地政客和工会的支持。
“当人们说‘我刚给你投了票’或‘我打算投你’时，他们真正想表达的是，‘在信息不足的情况下，我选择相信你会为我做正确的事’，”拉舍说，“这是一份沉甸甸的信任。它让人谦卑、心怀感激，有时也让人倍感压力。”
同样受到关注的还有州众议员亚历克斯·博雷斯——这位曾在数据与人工智能公司Palantir任职的工程师，成为了人工智能相关政治行动委员会巨额支出的焦点，支持和反对他的声音都很高。
“这场竞选仍非常本土化，”博雷斯说，“人们谈论的核心关切是当地的住房成本和其他民生问题。只是这场胜选的影响，远超议员本人在国会的直接作为。它向其他所有国会议员传递了一个信号。”
当CNN直接询问拉舍和博雷斯对施洛斯伯格的看法时，两人都回避了问题。但拉舍在最近的一场辩论中暗示，施洛斯伯格的竞选完全依赖肯尼迪家族的遗产。
“杰克，我从小就极其钦佩你们家族的服务精神，”拉舍略带腼腆又不无惋惜地说道，“但当我们谈论各自参选的理由时，我站在这里，是因为近二十年的公共服务经历。”
施洛斯伯格回击道：“永远不要拿我的家族姓氏来贬低我本人和我的品格。”
博雷斯最近则同时抨击了拉舍和施洛斯伯格：“我认为这个选区应得的不是老牌政客或世袭特权，而是真正的执行力。”
在嘲笑施洛斯伯格提及曾随担任奥巴马政府驻日大使的母亲在日本工作的经历后，拉舍和博雷斯的团队开始将这场竞选描述为周二的两人对决——这在施洛斯伯格竞选巅峰时期是完全无法想象的。
施洛斯伯格是该选区唯一一位反对向以色列提供武器资助的候选人——据熟悉相关对话的人士透露，他母亲帮助联系的一些捐赠者对此感到不满，因为他们此前被告知施洛斯伯格不会持此立场。
随后在5月下旬，Politico报道称，施洛斯伯格在当月早些时候对一家专属俱乐部表示，“在10月7日事件后的几年里，我可能会继续为以色列的进攻性武器提供资助”。
施洛斯伯格现在反对向以色列输送进攻性武器，但支持供应其铁穹导弹防御系统。他告诉CNN，他的立场发生了演变——尤其是在美国和以色列与伊朗爆发最新冲突之后，并表示这正是他能够成为不同世代和不同观点之间“桥梁”的绝佳例证。
“一开始我觉得‘别碰这个’，”施洛斯伯格说，“我当时在想，‘为什么？’我认为我们应该讨论这些议题。令我惊讶的是，当我当面给出我的回答时，人们会说，‘哇，这真是个很棒的回答’，哪怕他们并不完全认同我的观点。”
“我认为这对民主党来说也是一件非常重要的事，因为我们正陷入危险境地：以色列议题正成为人们竞选时的身份标签，”他补充道，“而且我认为其中很多都是机器人水军的操作。”
2008年末至2009年初的几周里，卡罗琳·肯尼迪曾试图被任命接替希拉里·克林顿出任参议员——当时希拉里已辞职担任奥巴马政府国务卿。但这场任命最终因外界对其从政资历的质疑，以及她一系列采访中“你知道”这类口头禅被反复嘲笑、引发其是否配得上肯尼迪家族遗产的讨论而宣告失败。她最终在奥巴马就职后不久退出了候选名单。
当时施洛斯伯格年仅16岁。
“我们母子经常一起思考，一起梳理很多事情，当时的情况也是如此。第一件事是2007年支持奥巴马。然后是2020年是否背书拜登，”施洛斯伯格说，“我想那对她来说很糟糕，因为她从未真正开展过一场竞选活动，所以情况有所不同。”
他停顿了片刻。“但最终一切都有了圆满结局，”他说，“大使职位对她而言是一段非凡的经历。”
卡罗琳·肯尼迪自女儿去世后几乎未曾公开露面，甚至很少与友人往来。但她儿子的最后一支竞选广告中，有她直接对着镜头讲话的片段，谈及他正是政治所需要的人才。画面中还有分屏的黑白影像，展示她与父亲约翰·肯尼迪一同玩耍的场景。在广告的最后几秒，施洛斯伯格走进镜头，将母亲拥入怀中。
“肯尼迪总统真的是一位英雄，我小时候就熟记他的演讲，在肯尼迪图书馆做过很多工作，也见证了父母为这份遗产付出了多少，”他说，“我认为这驱使我变得勇敢、拥有勇气，清楚自己的立场。我绝不会说这是件坏事。但无论好坏，一切都会被打上家族的烙印。”
他还没有开始思考周二选举结束后的早晨，无论输赢。
“唯一让我感到挫败的是——我能接受任何批评，我都听过了——但当人们说‘哦，你只是初出茅庐，如果这次没赢，下次再来’的时候，”他说，“我们已经没有多少时间来做出改变了，而且我们都不知道自己的人生会发生什么。不说丧气话，但悲剧随时可能降临。”
“现在就是最佳时机，”他补充道，“我真的以为人们已经意识到，美国和我们的政党正处于紧急红色预警状态。”
What is there to teach a Kennedy about politics? As Jack Schlossberg has found out, a lot
2026-06-22T09:00:26.098Z / CNN
- Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson, is facing a tough Democratic primary for Congress in Manhattan on Tuesday.
- The 33-year-old hoped his famous lineage and social media following would connect with disengaged voters.
- But his campaign has faced challenges amid staff departures, policy shifts and questions about his political credentials.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
What is there to teach a Kennedy about politics?
According to Jack Kennedy Schlossberg, as his name will appear on the ballot in Tuesday’s Democratic primary: Somehow, pretty much everything.
How brutal New York City machine politics really works. How the press can rip you apart. How far family connections can get you and how far they can’t. How hard it can be to keep a big smile and trademark double thumbs-up in photos while trying to keep loss and pain private. How utterly delicious so many have found his stumbles.
“Our party is just not good at selling our message – and that’s not everything, but it’s a huge part of it. And everyone says that it’s time for a new generation … the Democratic Party has got to learn how to do things differently – until somebody actually tries, and then they don’t want to,” Schlossberg told CNN, sitting at the revived H&H Bagels on Columbus Avenue, trying to stay upbeat.
The core idea of Schlossberg’s campaign to represent much of Manhattan in Congress: In an attention economy, a guy who very quickly turned his lineage into a massive online following and became a star of the last Democratic National Convention could connect with voters who think politics is pointless and their leaders are terrible.
But if multiple polls and the wariness of friends who have been helping him are proven right, Schlossberg is facing not just potential rejection but the prospect of letting down the Kennedy name and all the people who still get excited about it.
He could still emerge from an eight-candidate race for the 12th District that only requires a plurality to win. But rather than readying for the dawn of a new Camelot dauphin, Schlossberg is spending the final days of his campaign talking about the bot armies he believes have been created to astroturf bad comments about him online and having his allies put up “SELLOUTS BEWARE ↑” signs around the posters of his opponents.
CNN spoke to Schlossberg and several of his friends and donors, along with opponents who snipe that he’s barely been campaigning; that, according to people familiar with the matter, he didn’t realize when he started running that New York City’s ranked-choice voting system didn’t apply to the congressional race; that he has flipped out – both on X and in person – at rival consultants and others he’s determined are bad and insincere.
Between chatting with voters on a street corner on the Upper West Side last week, retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler interrupted an answer to another question from CNN to describe Schlossberg as “somebody with no credentials and no anything getting into the race.”
Nadler noted he had not gotten a heads-up from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Kennedy family friend, when she endorsed Schlossberg to run for his seat.
Friends bemoan that this could have gone differently if someone had figured out how to manage Schlossberg’s charisma and talent, though they acknowledge he’s often made himself unmanageable. To arrange an interview with him, for example, the request goes to his personal assistant because he fired more traditional staff like a press secretary after the first few weeks of his campaign.
“I feel like people cannot accept the fact that I might be a smart, hardworking person who is just really trying, because that’s unacceptable for some reason,” Schlossberg told CNN. “And so, I’ve got to be crazy, I’ve got to be completely unable to function and taking naps because what you see is someone who’s been really effective and taken seriously by the people who support him. And the people who support us are, like, diehard.”
The comment about taking naps is because of a key anecdote in a devastating New York Times story in May that on the day Schlossberg was preparing to launch his campaign, he told aides suddenly that he had to go home to sleep.
What was actually happening on November 12, he has told friends and reiterated to CNN, is that he was going to see his sister Tatiana Schlossberg, who had not yet revealed her terminal leukemia diagnosis, and didn’t trust any of the new people around him not to leak the news. Tatiana Schlossberg’s essay in The New Yorker disclosing her illness was published on November 22. She died on December 30.
Schlossberg, who’s 33, never met President John F. Kennedy. He can recall early memories with his near-doppelganger uncle John Jr., who remains such a fascination that he’s the topic of the Hulu series “Love Story” that just aired, nearly 27 years after the plane crash that killed him, and which the family says is an awful portrayal of them.
Schlossberg and his mother, Caroline Kennedy, have a bond so tight that he shares her laugh, her simultaneously ultimate insider and awkward outsider approach to politics, and her reluctant protectiveness of the family legacy. He also benefitted from her network of influential friends she corralled early into donating to his campaign.
A Jewish Kennedy – through his father, Edwin Schlossberg – might seem tailor-made for a district that has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country.
This is Manhattan, where what’s wrong with the Democratic Party is debated at bodegas and society fundraisers, where teenage girls ask Schlossberg for selfies on the sidewalk, and an older woman last week spent 10 minutes on a street corner talking with him about his family embodying the ideals of Catholic upward mobility.
The night that hundreds of people stood outside the Kennedy Center to watch President Donald Trump’s name being removed from the building because he was chasing his own association with the legacy, Schlossberg hosted a dance party in the district with special guest David Letterman, with whom he became friendly through his parents.
He is still trying to find a way to get an opinion piece published defending him from Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff who was, he says, a life-changing professor at Harvard Law School.
Schlossberg says he was constantly getting asked in recent years what he thought about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running for president and then getting appointed to Trump’s Cabinet, or Trump’s moves on trying to rename the Kennedy Center and declassifying certain JFK assassination files. That gave him a platform that he decided to take advantage of, he says.
“I didn’t just say, ‘Oh, hey, I’d like to try politics now after a lifetime of not caring.’ It was like, ‘No, this is all really happening right now, and it’s really important, and I was born into this situation, and I really, really care about, and know my history, and I know the history of our party,’” he said.
Part of that history is a website that leaned into JFK-style iconography, with ideas like counting rent like mortgage payments and making it deductible on federal income taxes, or demanding PACs get out of political campaigns.
But to Schlossberg, those issues are less the point than what he believes he could do and others couldn’t because of his name and social media followers. He argues he could break through on any point. Or, as two friends-turned-advisers put it to CNN and Schlossberg agreed, Trump would never know or care who the other candidates are. (George Conway, the longtime Republican backer turned Trump foil, has tried making a similar argument in the same primary.)
Nadler, 79, is backing Micah Lasher, an assemblyman who has risen through campaign and government jobs since he was the congressman’s intern 25 years ago.
Nadler told CNN that he knew he would back Lasher “the moment I decided not to run – and one of the reasons I decided not to run is I knew Micah could carry on.”
Helped by Nadler’s backing, Lasher racked up many local politician and union endorsements.
“When people say, ‘I just voted for you,’ or ‘I’m planning to vote for you,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘On the basis of not enough information, I’m making a decision to trust you to do the right thing for me,’” Lasher said. “And that is a very heavy thing. And it is humbling and wonderful and sometimes overwhelming.”
Also drawing attention is fellow Assemblyman Alex Bores, a former engineer for the data and AI company Palantir who has become a focal point for huge spending both for and against him from artificial intelligence-focused PACs.
“It’s still very much a local race,” Bores said. “The concerns that people talk about are the housing costs here and other local issues. It’s just the impact that the winner of this race will have goes beyond just directly what they will do in Congress. It’s the message that will be sent to every other member of Congress.”
Asked directly by CNN about their feelings on Schlossberg, Lasher and Bores both demurred. But Lasher in a recent debate implied that the Kennedy legacy was all there was to Schlossberg’s candidacy.
“As someone who grew up enormously admiring the legacy of service in your family, Jack, I say this somewhat sheepishly and mournfully,” Lasher said, “but when we talk about the reasons that each of us are on this stage, I’m on this stage because of nearly two decades in public service.”
Schlossberg fired back: “Do not ever invoke my family name to try to denigrate who I am and the person that I am.”
And Bores recently took a shot at both Lasher and Schlossberg: “I think this district deserves more than establishment or entitlement; it deserves effectiveness.”
After sneering about Schlossberg citing working in Japan when he was there because his mother took him along when she was ambassador under President Barack Obama, associates of both Lasher and Bores are talking about a two-man race on Tuesday, something that was unimaginable when Schlossberg’s campaign was at its height.
Schlossberg was the only candidate in the district to come out against arms funding for Israel — to the frustration of some donors his mother helped line up under assurances he would not, according to people familiar with those conversations.
Then, in late May, Politico reported Schlossberg had told an exclusive private club earlier that month, “I probably would have continued funding Israel’s offensive weaponry within the years following October 7.”
Schlossberg now opposes sending offensive weapons to Israel but backs supplying its Iron Dome missile defense system. He told CNN his own positions evolved – especially after the US and Israel launched the latest war with Iran – and said this was a prime example of how he could be a “bridge” between generations and points of view.
“In the beginning it was like, ‘Don’t touch it,’” Schlossberg said. “I was, like, ‘Why?’ I think we should be talking about these things, and to my surprise, like in person, when I give my answer in person, people say, ‘Wow, that was like a really great answer,’ even if they don’t agree with me 100%.”
“I see this as like a really important thing for the party too because I think we’re getting into some dangerous territory with Israel being kind of how people are making their identity with their campaigns,” he said, adding, “And I think a lot of it is this bot activity.”
For several weeks in late 2008 and early 2009, Caroline Kennedy was trying to be appointed to the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton gave up to become Obama’s secretary of state. Then that all also collapsed amid questions about her experience and a series of interviews where even the number of times she said “you know” became a subject of mockery and a question of whether she measured up to the Kennedy legacy. She eventually withdrew from consideration just after Obama was sworn in.
Schlossberg was 16 then.
“She and I think together a lot, think through a lot of things together. We thought through that. The first was Obama in 2007. Then it was whether or not to endorse Biden in 2020,” Schlossberg said. “I think that sucked for her because she didn’t really get to run a campaign, so it was different.”
He paused briefly. “It all worked out in the end,” he said. “Ambassador was an amazing role for her.”
Kennedy has hardly been in public or even engaging much with friends since her daughter died. But her son’s final ad features her speaking direct to camera about how he is what politics needs. There’s a split screen of black-and-white footage of her playing with her father. In the final seconds, Schlossberg comes into the frame to wrap her in a hug.
“President Kennedy is really, you know, a hero, and I memorized his speeches as a kid and did a lot of work at the Kennedy Library and I see how much my mom and dad have both given up their lives to, kind of, in service of that,” he said. “I think it pushes me to be brave and to have courage and to know what I stand for. I’m not about to say that it’s a bad thing. But it sort of filters how everything is perceived, good or bad.”
He hasn’t started thinking about the morning after Tuesday yet, win or lose.
“The only thing that frustrates me — I can take anything, I’ve heard it all — but when people say like, ‘Oh well, you’re early out and if you don’t win, you’ll do it again,’” he said. “We’re kind of running out of time here to change things up, and we all have no idea what’s going to happen in our lives. Not to be morbid, but something terrible could happen.”
“The time is right now,” he added. “I just really thought people were keyed into the fact that this is a code-red, emergency situation for America and our party.”