Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Caroline Kennedy’s effort to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate sparked objections among New York lawmakers who say her family name alone doesn’t qualify her for the job.

Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of late President John F. Kennedy, captured national attention last week by announcing her intention to seek the appointment from New York Governor David Paterson. She has never held elective office and largely shunned the limelight before delivering an endorsement this year that helped President-elect Barack Obama defeat Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

“The last thing we need is a People magazine celebrity as our United States senator, especially someone who has no experience, who, as far as I know, has never held a real job,” Republican Representative Peter King said on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “How can the average New Yorker identify with Caroline Kennedy?”

Representative Gary Ackerman said New York voters know little about Kennedy, who graduated from Radcliffe College and Columbia University Law School and has written seven books on civil liberties, poetry and political integrity.

“She’s sequestered herself for her whole life, nobody knows what her values are,” Ackerman, a Democrat, said on CBS. New Yorkers don’t know “what kind of a fighter she will be,” he said, adding “eventually she has to get into the ring, face the public.”

Helping Schools

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein defended Kennedy, who served as chief executive for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education, where she helped raise more than $65 million in private support, including $51 million from Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates’s foundation.

She currently serves as the vice chair of The Fund for Public Schools and is president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

Klein called Kennedy “a woman of character and a woman of conviction.”

“This woman put her shoulder to the wheel, went out there and sent a powerful message to the entire city that public education matters,” Klein said. “She’s a fighter.”

Former New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro, who ran for vice president on the 1984 Democratic ticket, said on CBS that she would prefer the choice of a senator “who knows the process” and “who can get down there and hit the ground running.”

Trip to Buffalo

Republican Representative Thomas Reynolds said on CBS that it was a “no-no” last week when Kennedy arrived in the blue- collar town of Buffalo, in upstate New York, in a foreign car, even though she left in a Jeep. “We’ve seen the Senate become a House of Lords,” Reynolds said on the CBS program.

Governor Paterson, a Democrat, has said he won’t make a choice until Clinton resigns to become secretary of state after Obama takes office on Jan. 20. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Kirsten Gillibrand have also been reported as possible candidates for the Senate seat.

Caroline Kennedy was five days from her sixth birthday on Nov. 22, 1963, when her father, then 46, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

If chosen by Paterson, she would follow in the footsteps of her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, the New York senator who was assassinated in Los Angeles in June 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Larkin in Washington at clarkin4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 21, 2008 15:16 EST