‘Taking On’ Shows GOP Underdog’s Fight

The PBS documentary series “P.O.V.” resumes tonight with Joshua Seftel’s engaging film tracing a 1994 congressional race that in some ways is a metaphor for electioneering in the United States.

The difference is that the underdog Republican candidate in “Taking On the Kennedys” is opposed by much more than a mere Democrat in Rhode Island. Kevin Vigilante, a 39-year-old physician in his first race, is facing a political dynasty in the person of Patrick Kennedy, 26, youngest son of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the latest in a long line of Kennedy office seekers.

The founder of an urban clinic, Vigilante enters the race with refreshing candor and high-mindedness, if not a well-defined agenda for the folks he hopes to represent. Six parades, 20 festivals, dozens of supermarkets and a slew of senior centers later, he wins the GOP primary and the right to get clobbered by the heavily favored Kennedy, a state senator, in a heavily Democratic district.

“Taking On the Kennedys” is strikingly intimate at times. Seftel has unusual access here, especially to Vigilante, who is projected as politically naive and exceedingly honest, at one point frustrating his head handler by admitting to a reporter that he smoked marijuana in college. “Am I gonna lie?” he says afterward.

He lacks the big-name clout and media support enjoyed by his younger foe, who comes across as someone riding high on his name and something less than a rocket scientist. Initially, Vigilante has a wee campaign chest and, it appears, much less zest for negative campaigning than Kennedy. By election day, however, Vigilante has almost matched the $1 million raised by Kennedy and done his own bit of political mud wrestling in response to ugly TV ads attacking him.

Trailing Kennedy by 30 points in the polls only three weeks before the election, Vigilante ends up losing with 46% of the vote, an amazing result considering his opponent, his own inexperience and how swiftly he narrowed the gap.

Kennedy was running because that’s what Kennedys do. But exactly what drove Vigilante to dive into national politics is never clarified. Nor is whether this bruising experience has soured him to the process or inspired him to someday take another shot.

* “Taking On the Kennedys” airs on “P.O.V.” at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.