|
|
|
|
Transition tough on candidate's wife By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY WASHINGTON Teresa Heinz Kerry is small and soft-spoken and supportive of her husband as they sit in their Georgetown garden, sipping peach iced tea. She wants to help him. She is ready to campaign for him. But it's clear a presidential campaign is not her first choice of how to spend her time.
Senator John Kerry says he sees his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as an asset to his bid for the White House.
By Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
Heinz Kerry's outspokenness is on display when she is asked whether she would prefer not to be involved in a campaign. "It would be easier," she says after a pause. "Basically I am a shy person. I like people, but I am very private." Then the proper political spouse kicks in. "But I also am engaged in ideas and trying to solve problems. And this is an arena in which you can do that." Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is one of the strongest entries in the crowded Democratic presidential field. Political observers and opponents are watching to see whether his unconventional wife emerges as a handicap or an unexpected source of strength. The past year has given ammunition to those who see Heinz Kerry as a source of controversy. In interview after interview, with Vogue, Elle and The New Yorker, the Boston Globe and Herald, and The Washington Post, she has said things that won't go away.
Wife may use money
As Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts runs for president, the question on many political minds is whether he and his wife will use their fortunes to win the presidency or accept federal money and the spending limits that go with it.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, No. 391 on the Forbes list of the richest Americans, is worth at least $550 million, according to the magazine. Kerry reported investments worth $700,000 to $2.4 million on his Senate financial statement. He also has several million dollars in assets such as real estate in his name or owned jointly with his wife.
Under election law, Kerry could not use his wife's ketchup wealth for his campaign. Like every citizen, she can donate no more than $2,000 directly to his campaign, but she is free to spend unlimited amounts on ads not coordinated with the campaign.
Kerry says he'll decide on primary-season spending in November, but he does not intend to use personal money. "I've never used it in any campaign, and I don't plan to," he says. "There's too much money in American politics."
"But I can do what I want," his wife interjects. "I've always said I do not believe in spending personal money for campaigns, but I do believe in the right of defense, correcting one's reputation."
If the primary or general-election campaign brought personal attacks on Kerry, his wife could run independent ads defending him or could contribute money to a group for that purpose.
A candidate who accepts federal money for the primary season is limited to spending about $44 million. The Republican and Democratic nominees each get $74.4 million in federal money for the general election campaign.
By Jill Lawrence, USA TODAY
She's talked about her serious work on education, pensions, the arts and the environment. But she's also discussed her prenuptial agreement, her Botox treatments and how she'd "maim" an unfaithful husband. She's said she'd be a "ninny" if she didn't have strong opinions at her age (64, five years older than Kerry). In a Post profile that aides to Kerry denounce as distorted, she is described as bickering with her husband, appearing to mock his Vietnam nightmares and referring to Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, who died in 1991, as "my husband." It has been a rough initiation, even for a veteran of five Senate campaigns in two states. In a Senate race, Heinz Kerry says, "not too many people pay attention" to the wife. "The stakes in a presidential campaign are obviously very different. Everything has a lot more meaning." Heinz Kerry made no secret of her disdain for politics even as she was married to one senator, then another. Her stock response to their presidential ambitions was "over my dead body." But here she is on her patio, calling Kerry "sweetie" and clasping his hand, discussing her philanthropic work and what she'd bring to a Kerry administration. The tranquil domestic tableau mirrors the adjustments she has made in the past year. In January, she switched her voter registration from Republican to Democrat. She used to say she wouldn't change her name, but this year she added "Kerry" to it. "She will campaign, and she's terrific," Kerry says in earnest defense. "She talks from her heart, from her gut, from a lot of experience. She understands all the ups and downs of life, the pain and the suffering that goes with it and the joys of it. People are going to find her a remarkably diverse, nurturing, thoughtful, sensitive human being." Heinz Kerry offers a long history of work and philanthropic giving on issues important to labor, women, senior citizens and environmentalists. All are key Democratic constituencies. And she has close ties to Pennsylvania, a pivotal state in presidential politics. The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO named her "citizen of the year" in 1998. Born in Mozambique, daughter of a Portuguese doctor, she speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Italian. She was working as an interpreter in Geneva when she met John Heinz, heir to a family soup and ketchup company. They married in 1966 and had three sons. He became a senator, a centrist Republican. And then one day in 1991, he died in a helicopter-plane collision over Philadelphia. The devastated widow began getting to know Kerry in 1992, four years after his divorce, at an environmental conference in Brazil. They married in 1995. They have three sons (hers), two daughters (his) and homes in Boston, Nantucket, Washington, suburban Pittsburgh and Ketchum, Idaho. Heinz Kerry had not only campaigned for Heinz but substituted for him at debates. When he died, she declined the Republican Party's entreaties to run for his seat. Instead, she took over his job as chairman of the Heinz Endowments and the Heinz Family Philanthropies and set about achieving social progress. She called political campaigns "the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises." Has she changed her mind? "I don't think politics is worthless," she says, but "the general tone of campaigns has not gotten any better. One can try. John is trying to set a standard." The Kerrys have a policy partnership of sorts. She finances projects and reports back to him on what works. One of her projects, a prescription drug benefit plan for the elderly, is now law in Massachusetts. Another, a southwestern Pennsylvania program to ensure healthy child development and education, is the basis of a speech Kerry will give in the next few weeks. Lest anyone get the idea that Heinz Kerry would hole up in the White House writing grandiose policy prescriptions like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Kerry says Americans "know what they don't want" in a first lady: "They don't want somebody who's trying to have a job, who's trying to force themselves into public policy. And Teresa has neither desire nor intention of doing that. We're not running around offering people a twofer." One of the buzzworthy things Heinz Kerry did in the past year was to discuss prostate cancer at a Boston fundraiser in March, a few weeks after her husband had prostate cancer surgery. Word was that aides would have preferred to divert attention from the senator's illness, not focus on it. But she offered graphic details and a caution to men: Get checked out. "I might not have done it the best way possible, but I think it was an important thing to do," Heinz Kerry says. Heinz Kerry's registration switch will enable her to vote for her husband in the Pennsylvania primary next spring. But she says the impetus behind the change was anger at the way Republicans conducted the elections in 2002. She says she feels "alien" from the conservative tilt of the party. She was upset about attacks on Max Cleland, then a senator from Georgia, a Vietnam veteran who lost three limbs in battle. The upsetting tactic? "You know, that he was unpatriotic," she says. She does not add, as she did in January to the Boston Herald, "Does he have to lose a fourth limb to be patriotic?" She is trying to say nothing interesting enough for gossip columns. "I like boring. I'll take boring," she says, and looks at her famously studious, long-winded husband. "I'll talk the boring, and he can talk the fluff." Return to John Kerry Homepage
John Kerry Vietnam War Protestor
John Kerry Photo History Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7
Senator John Forbes Kerry Military History
John F. Kerry Silver Star Medal
History of the Silver Star
Senator John F. Kerry, Candidate in the Making
Senator Kerry's speech at 20th Anniversary of the Vietnam Wall Memorial.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vietnam War History
