Kennedy returned home from abroad in 2006, honored, he says, to have been admitted to Harvard Law School, a campus steeped in ancestral legacy.

Yet, for all his striking resemblances to iconic family members—the shock of red hair, slightly untamed, the sharp facial features, freckled with an Irish complexion, the wide convincing gait—Kennedy’s time at Harvard was shaped by his own interests more so than a familial legacy.

A number of Kennedy’s closest friends from law school said it took them months to realize just who the laid-back Kennedy really was.

“As far as I knew, he was just a guy who played college lacrosse, and we were having a lot of fun working together,” Hartigan says.

“He’s about as normal as it gets,” says Kennedy’s classmate who requested anonymity. “He’s a very dressed-down type when he’s in his element.”

Kennedy was just as unassuming with his clients, Bureau colleagues say, never going out of his way to mention his last name or allude to his family.

“That was just his way,” Nessen says.

“What’s funny about it is, Joe could very well be trumpeting who he is and where he comes from—and he’s got every right—but he just never, never talks about it,” Kennedy’s classmate says. “It’s not because he’s secretive, but it’s because he’s built his whole life on standing on his own two feet.”

“UNCHARACTERISTIC OF HIM”

For a Kennedy, politics is the perpetual elephant in the room, but the young Congressional candidate says he had no intention of running for public office when he arrived at Harvard Law School.

Those who worked with him at the Legal Aid Bureau or the Human Rights Journal agree that Kennedy did not have overt political ambitions, even if the work he was doing provided a recognizable political foundation.

“He has this commitment to public service, but he wasn’t the person in my group that I thought was going to run for office,” Nessen says. “It’s actually uncharacteristic of him.”

But by the time he graduated from the Law School, Kennedy’s stance had changed. Though he had always been committed to public service, public office seemed an increasingly likely option for the young graduate.

“I wasn’t thinking about running for public office when I got here,” Kennedy says. “I think the experience of learning what the law can do to set the structures for society and then what you can do to change that...definitely led to my decision to eventually run.”

Even if they would not have expected it, friends say they are not surprised Kennedy is running. His focus on public service and social justice at the Law School, they say, laid the groundwork for either of two careers: law or poltics.