When 30-year-old Edward Moore Kennedy '54-'56 (D-Mass.) was nominated in 1962 to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by his brother, President John F. Kennedy '40, his opponent charged that the young candidate was merely living off of his name, saying that "if your name was Edward Moore, your candidacy would be a joke."

Kennedy went on to win that election with the help of his name, and what proved successful in 1962 is still successful today. No family has so singularly dominated the American political scene and been so successful in electoral politics for as long as the Kennedys.

According to political observers it's almost impossible to defeat a Kennedy in an election. But Joseph Malone '78 and Glenn Fiscus are shunning conventional wisdom in their attempts to do what many consider impossible--unseat an incumbent Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Tomorrow, Malone, a business executive from Waltham, will try to stop Edward Kennedy's re-election to his Senate seat for a sixth term, and Fiscus, an engineer originally from Pittsburgh, Pa., will challenge U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II (D-Mass.), who is defending for the first time Massachusetts' Eighth District congressional seat, which he won in 1986.

Although polls show both Kennedys are likely to be re-elected, their opponents are still confident.

"All elections are tough," Fiscus said. "I knew going in that incumbents get re-elected 99 times to one. In order to be elected, you have get to the people and talk to them. If I got to every voter I'd win hands-down. In the past six months I've probably shaken about 15,000 hands."

"Popularity and name recognition are two very different things," according to Ellen Wilkins, a spokesperson for Malone's campaign. "In a race with Ted Kennedy, 40 percent of the people know him and like him, 40 percent know him and dislike him. The key is winning the hearts and minds of the other 20 percent."

If Fiscus and Malone lose to the Kennedys, they will join a very long list of also-rans.

Joseph Kennedy Sr., who served as ambassador to the Court of St. James, urged his children to enter politics. They did, producing one President, one U.S. Attorney General, three U.S. Senators and a U.S. Representative. A third generation of the Kennedy clan is just getting started in electoral politics, but has already yielded a member of Congress and a state representative.

The familiarity of the Kennedy name and the warm memories of President Kennedy and his brother, presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy '48 (D-N.Y.), translate into votes and make it almost impossible to defeat a Kennedy in an election, according to political observers.

"I can't quantify how many votes the name recognition got for [Joe] Kennedy, but I know that he had immediate name recognition," said Tom Gallagher, who dropped out of the Eighth District race in June 1986. "The first name really matter. Having the [Kennedy] just snowballs."

"Any Kennedy who runs begins with a tremendous reservoir of respect and affection with a large number of voters," said James Roosevelt Jr., who also lost to Kennedy that year.

"The memories that people have of John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy have created an aura of good feeling for anyone with that name. The memory has become more institutionalized in that it now applies across the board to any member of the family."

Roosevelt attempted to use the familiarity of his own name in the 1986 race, but found the Kennedy name outweighed even a name shared by two U.S. Presidents.

"First of all, the Kennedy family much more directly has ties to Massachusetts and New England," Roosevelt said. "And secondly, many more people are alive who have had first-hand experiences with John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy."