Kennedy's exit rewrites the political game book.

By DAVID SCHARFENBERG  |  February 17, 2010

Representative Patrick J. Kennedy's campaigns were always about something far larger than Rhode Island's First Congressional District, which snakes from Burrillville down through the Blackstone Valley and into Newport.

Kennedy voters were casting a ballot not just for the Congressman, but for Camelot. And the conservative donors from Ohio and Texas who funded the opposition were taking a shot not just at a liberal representative, but at liberalism itself.

The race to succeed the Congressman, who stunned the political class with the recent announcement that he is not seeking re-election, will take on some of the national cast of recent First Congressional District contests.

Indeed, the mere fact that a Kennedy is vacating the seat is sure to attract some attention from out-of-town reporters, particularly if the GOP somehow mounts a credible challenge and produces the inevitable comparisons to Republican Scott Brown's capture of the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

But the nascent race is shaping up like something far more conventional and, for the political junky, far more intriguing: an old-fashioned Democratic scrum that will ripple across the state's political firmament.

Indeed, with Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline declaring for Kennedy's seat, an intense battle to seize City Hall is already under way, with would-be candidates like former State Senator Myrth York and Harvard-educated Latino lawyer Angel Taveras jockeying for support.

Bill Lynch's decision to step down as Democratic Party chairman and run for Congress has set off a second fight for control of the party apparatus — a fight that could provide an early glimpse at where new kingmaker, Speaker of the House Gordon Fox, would like to take the Democrats.

The Providence City Council and the General Assembly are sure to feel the effects, too. And the race could even change the dynamics of Rhode Island's closely fought gubernatorial contest.

Kennedy's retirement is, in short, a feast for a state that has always had a hearty appetite for politics. Let's dig in.