Senate colleagues react to news about Kennedy
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The news that Sen. Edward Kennedy had been diagnosed with a brain tumor broke Tuesday as Senate Democrats and Republicans were having their weekly closed policy lunches in the Capitol.
When Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told his Democratic colleagues about Kennedy, there was “stunned silence,” one senator said.
Capitol police officers and Senate staffers gathered around television screens off the Senate floor and watched news reports about Kennedy.
Kennedy, 76, was airlifted Saturday to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston after suffering a seizure. Following a battery of tests, doctors determined a malignant tumor in the brain caused the seizure, the hospital said Tuesday. Kennedy was first elected to the Senate in 1962.
Sen. John Kerry, a Kennedy friend and fellow Massachusetts Democrat, arrived late and entered a back door to the lunch. Looking drained, he declined to comment except to nod that he had spoken to Kennedy’s family.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, spoke quietly on his cell phone outside the lunch. He looked emotional when he hung up and told a reporter, “I can’t say anything.”
Durbin later released a statement: “Ted Kennedy has spent his life caring for those in need. Now it’s time for those who love Ted and his family to care for them and join in prayer to give them strength.”
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, predicted if anyone could overcome illness, Kennedy would. “Look what he’s been through in his life,” Conrad said.
Kennedy’s older brothers, President Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, were both assassinated. The oldest brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr., was killed in World War II.
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said, “Ted Kennedy makes the Senate the place that it is and has for so many years.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, described Kennedy as a “personal mentor.” “Sen. Kennedy approaches every obstacle with tremendous courage, poise and resolve. And I know his tremendous heart and spirit will prevail now,” she said.
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans expressed concern for Kennedy, perhaps the best-known Senate liberal.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said he was “hoping for the best and for a speedy recovery for our colleague, Sen. Kennedy. And I know I speak for every Republican in the conference that this was a development of a great concern and sadness for all of our members.”
U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, said: “Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and to him. We hope and pray that they will be able to treat it and that he will experience a full recovery.”
Speaking in Florida aboard his campaign bus, McCain added: “I have described Ted Kennedy as the last lion in the Senate. And I have held that view because he remains the single most effective member of the Senate.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the news of Kennedy’s brain tumor “has been met throughout the country with great concern. I have confidence, though, because Sen. Kennedy has been a fighter all his life. I know that this fighting spirit will hold him in good stead.”
