Unknowns join battle for Kennedy seat

BOSTON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Besides the five major candidates vying for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat are four dozen contenders who filed papers to be in Massachusetts special election.

A review of papers filed by people seeking Kennedy's Senate seat revealed some of the candidates have previous campaign experience -- running and losing bids for mayor, Congress and president, while others indicated they were unemployed, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday.

Few, if any, of the relatively unknown candidates likely will raise the money or gather the signatures necessary to mount a competitive campaign, the newspaper said, and some said they probably will not run. To qualify for the ballot, candidates running in a party primary need 10,000 petition signatures by Oct. 20, while those running as independents need 10,000 signatures by Nov. 24.

"Believe me, I don't have any illusion of winning," Sean Brady, an unemployed auto salesman and Army veteran from Hanson, Mass., told the Globe. "I just want to send a message, and the message is that we're tired of the way things are going."

In the race to succeed Kennedy, who died in August after battling brain cancer, four major Democrats -- Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei, and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca -- formally announced campaigns. State Sen. Scott Brown is the most prominent Republican in the contest.