Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Message to Hillary Clinton supporters regarding the Senate seat that Caroline Kennedy, who endorsed Barack Obama, is seeking: If people with no electoral experience shouldn’t represent New York, where would the former first lady, the vessel for your undying devotion, be?

Had she been a Rodham not a Clinton, Hillary might have been written off not just as a carpetbagger but an unqualified one who’d only visited the state as a tourist. As a Clinton, she decamped from the White House, foreswore residence in Illinois and Arkansas, and moved to Chappaqua. The rest is history.

There are others objecting to Kennedy, loudest among them those who would like the seat themselves. They express any reason but the real one: It’s a zero-sum game they want to win.

Instead, they complain about dynasties and celebrity. Congressman Gary Ackerman, a Queens Democrat, sniffed in a radio interview, “I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are, except that she has name recognition, but so does J.Lo,” a reference to the pop singer with no obvious legislative chops.

I have questions about Kennedy, beginning with whether she realizes she won’t be in Manhattan anymore. It’s a long way from Camelot to the Russell Senate Office Building. Imagine if Dorothy had grown up in Oz and landed in Kansas.

She’s a constitutional scholar, but her constituents will care more about milk-price supports and federal grants than habeas corpus and due process. She’ll need a heartfelt opinion on everything from card check to the Doha Round, distilled into mindless sound bites.

$100,000 a Day

From the minute she takes office, she will have to raise $100,000 a day to amass the estimated $70 million needed to win election in 2010, up from the $31 million Clinton raised in 2000. Her Kennedy genes prepare her for the task, just as surely as her Bouvier genes do not.

Kennedy’s friends say she knows all that and still wants the job. Two things have come together: Her three children are up and running. Rose and Tatiana are in college. Her youngest, John, is a high school sophomore so tall she had to reach up to hug him at the Democratic convention.

And she reveled in campaigning for Obama and chairing his vice-presidential selection team. He’s the first candidate who inspired her to spend the political capital she held as the surviving daughter of John F. Kennedy.

Prepping the Crowds

While she did almost as much work with a clipboard as she did warming up crowds at rallies with her gravely ill uncle, Ted Kennedy, she really liked it.

She’s long been in public service, of a sort suited to a mother of means. Married to Edwin Schlossberg, an interactive exhibit designer, she’s held important posts at the Kennedy Library and American Ballet Theater, oversees the Profiles in Courage Award, and written two books on constitutional law.

In 2002, she dipped her toe into trickier waters, becoming chief fundraiser for the public schools of New York. New York schools Chancellor Joel Klein says she “was a workhorse not a show horse.”

For this Senate seat, only the vote of Governor David Paterson counts, a remnant from the days when state legislatures chose senators, and governors got to fill vacancies during the long periods between sessions.

Governors often go sentimental giving a wife the nod: Muriel Humphrey (for Hubert), Jean Carnahan (for Mel, killed in a plane crash), Jocelyn Burdick (for Quentin). Three children appointed -- Senators Harry F. Byrd Jr., Lincoln Chaffee and Lisa Murkowski -- went on to win themselves.

Yet an appointment isn’t an election -- of 49 senators named over the past 25 Congresses, way less than half went on to win campaigns on their own. Competing has to be done coyly. Show too much leg and you place undue pressure on the governor. Don’t show enough and you look like you’re taking it for granted.

Milking Cows

With the assumption being she wasn’t interested, Kennedy has to show more interest than others. She’s hired a top political gun, Josh Isay, who is close to his former boss, Senator Charles Schumer. Dozens of New York figures -- Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of Rochester, the mayor of Buffalo, the Reverend Al Sharpton -- have picked up the phone to hear the soft voice of Kennedy on the other end. She and Clinton, who reportedly has told her supporters to quiet down, exchanged calls.

Kennedy is planning a tour upstate, where her support is weakest, to shake hands and maybe tickle a cow or two under the chin. No one thought Clinton could compete much beyond Westchester, yet she got so comfortable in farm country, she could practically milk a Holstein.

Waiting for Tantrum

Paterson has reportedly told aides he’s warming to Kennedy. She’d be 100th in seniority, but first among equals with her close ties to Obama, who called Kennedy one of his “dearest friends.”

Were Paterson to make the self-serving choice, he’d pick former Kennedy-in-law Andrew Cuomo, thereby removing his top challenger for governor in 2010. Cuomo wants the Senate seat so much he’s heeded advice to lay low and let the Caroline boomlet play out.

Choosing Cuomo would also save Paterson from an earful. Kennedy’s reaction, should she not be chosen, will be a lot quieter than the tantrum Cuomo will throw.

For Americans of a certain age, who’ve mostly seen Kennedy in mourning, she’s a reminder of a golden time in politics. Her enchanted life may work against her. But like Dorothy, she may only have to tap her heels three times and say there is no place like the Senate to get there.

(Margaret Carlson, author of “Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House” and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 18, 2008 00:04 EST