Contends Speculation on ’88 Race Jeopardized His Effectiveness in Senate : Kennedy, Rejecting Idea of Draft, Says He Could Have Won Nomination

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Friday that he believes he could have won the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, but made his decision not to run to be “more effective” in the Senate.

The 53-year-old Massachusetts Democrat told a crowded press conference here that he “still would like to be President,” but said he would refuse a draft at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. He said that the job “has been removed from my future.”

Instead, Kennedy plans to run for a fifth term to the Senate in 1988, where, he said, “I believe that I can be more effective on the issues that I care about.”

Ending Weeks of Reports

Kennedy disclosed his decision Thursday night in a five-minute taped commercial broadcast by two Boston television stations, ending weeks of growing reports that he was planning to run for the presidency.

The senator, looking tanned and relaxed, told the news conference that he was formally withdrawing now because speculation about his intentions was hurting his political effectiveness.

“I’ve become increasingly convinced I was unable to speak about the important issues without having the issues put in the category of my political future,” he said.

He said that he grew frustrated when a trip to South Africa to “raise the profound moral issue of apartheid” and a speech last spring at Hofstra University about the future of the Democratic Party, were “widely interpreted as political statements about my position on the issues for 1988.”

The senator, who has lost more than 20 pounds in recent months, said: “I find that people are more interested not in the substance of what I am saying, but in whether I am moving to the left or right, or whether my weight is going up or down.

“The obvious fact is that I’m a person of ambition, and I stated that I wanted to be President, and I still would like to be. But there’s also the recognition that you make, the judgment about how you can be most effective in public service and public life. When I thought that issue through, I found the decision was not a complicated one.”

Accompanied by Children

Kennedy, who was divorced from his wife, Joan, in 1983, was accompanied by his children, Patrick, Ted Jr. and Kara, in a ballroom packed with aides, supporters and reporters at the stately Parker House hotel.

Kennedy said that his children “would have been at my side through any 1988 campaign,” but said that the race would have been a “burden” to his family. One top aide said that Kennedy’s children had approved a 1988 presidential bid last month, but added: “They also made it clear they would be relieved if he didn’t (run).”

“We’re going to have him around a lot more, and we’re all very pleased,” Ted Jr., 23, told reporters.

Kennedy said that he is convinced he could have won the 1988 Democratic nomination even though he lost a bitter primary battle to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, and has been dogged by nagging questions about his personal life, including the 1969 drowning death of a female companion at Chappaquiddick.

“I would have been able to gain the nomination, and I would have been a strong contender for the presidency,” he said. “Realistically,” he added, “it would be a difficult struggle to win the office.”

Kennedy said he was “satisfied” that polls show him to be the Democratic front-runner for 1988. Several polls have shown him leading such possible candidates as Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.), New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader, and Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca.

The senator, who spent Thursday night at his mother’s house in Hyannisport on Cape Cod, calling friends and supporters, refused to endorse another Democrat for 1988, but said he does not “rule out” supporting and campaigning for another candidate.

Leaves for Survey on Poor

After the press conference Friday, Kennedy departed with sons Patrick and Ted Jr. and nephew Mark Shriver for a four-state visit to the Midwest and Appalachia to survey hunger among distressed farmers and the unemployed.

He said that the trip was designed to “bring home to a prosperous America the truth that there is still another America nearly invisible in our midst where people are suffering.”

In Washington, Democratic National Chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. said that, “in both content and timing,” Kennedy’s decision to step aside was “an act of personal strength and political class.”

Kirk, a former Kennedy aide who managed the senator’s unsuccessful 1980 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and won the chairmanship last February after a bruising battle, conceded that he had assumed when he took his post that Kennedy would be a presidential candidate in 1988. He said that he did not expect Kennedy’s withdrawal to affect the party chairmanship “at all.”