At a quiet Cambridge kick-off for Sen. Edward Kennedy '54's re-election campaign, three local coordinators urged supporters to keep working despite Kennedy's apparent strength in the area.

"Could you tell that he was laughing the whole time?" Caroline Kennedy '80 said.

"Did I look as if I was laughing?" replied Andy Karsch, Cambridge coordinator for the Kennedy campaign.

None of the three coordinators seemed to laugh as they addressed a group of about 150 local Kennedy supporters at a small rally held in the Stephen James House in Porter Square last night.

Facing a group that included Caroline Kennedy, City Councilors Walter J. Sullivan and Barbara Ackermann and City Manager James C. Sullivan, the three coordinators lauded Cambridge as the top Kennedy organization in the state and called for "a lot of volunteers to do a little work" and get the voters to the polls for the Senator on election day.

"A significant number of people thought it was over after the primary," said state coordinator William Mohan, "but the Senator's taking this thing very seriously."

"We have to know where the Kennedy vote is; we've got to go out and start knocking on doors. You're going to be the Kennedy contact, between our organization and the voter on the street," Mohan said.

Although scheduled speaker Joseph P. Kennedy III was detained in Hyannis Port, Mass., Caroline Kennedy was introduced before the crowd melted back toward a table of cake, doughnuts, and coffee.

"I talked the other night," Kennedy said, mingling as the cake was served.

"And she was scintillating, eloquent, and a warm feeling spread through the crowd as she spoke," a man at her elbow said.