"There was never any doubt that he was out there watching out for you," Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition told a reporter last week. "He had your back."
Kennedy’s colleagues, Sen. John Kerry and U.S. Rep. John Tierney of Salem, have both supported financial aid to the industry. But Kerry, with his ties and sympathies more in line with environmentalists who continue to call for tighter regulation on fishing, has not had the visceral connection to the industry that Kennedy did. And fishing has not been the priority for Tierney that it was for Kennedy.
Read the complete story from The Salem News Online.
See also: Kennedy championed fishermen’s causes,
and News analysis: ‘With fisheries, the first number you’d dial was Kennedy’s’,
and Senator Ted Kennedy, Friend of the Fisherman, 1932-2009.