Intern claim is 'no story' says Kerry
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON
[If I remember correctly, the Kerry intern rumor has been around for at least a year or so, Drudge just re hashed it.. pb]
UNITED States presidential hopeful John Kerry yesterday moved to end speculation about explosive rumours which could bring his campaign crashing down around him.
Interviewed on a radio programme the day after an internet site reported a potentially scandalous investigation of Mr Kerry’s relations with a young woman, the man who has been all but crowned the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate said:
"There is nothing to report, nothing to talk about. There’s nothing there. There’s no story."
Although the story, broken by the internet columnist and gossip merchant Matt Drudge, has been widely reported in the international press, it has been largely ignored by the major US media outlets.
Don Imus, a radio host who interviewed Mr Kerry yesterday, gingerly raised the issue, prefacing his question to Mr Kerry with the words "there’s probably nothing to it".
Mr Drudge claimed the US media was investigating reports the woman in question had left the US at Mr Kerry’s behest. The site also suggested Wesley Clark, a fellow Democratic candidate who pulled out of the race last week before backing Mr Kerry, told reporters in an off-the-record briefing: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue."
Most of the mainstream US press ignored the story yesterday. Although the Philadelphia Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned the allegations, it was largely left to local radio stations across the US to raise the issue.
The woman in question is reported to be an intern who worked for the Massachusetts senator after previously working as a journalist for the Associated Press in New York.
Her parents are believed to live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she is thought to have gone to Africa, allegedly after being asked by Mr Kerry to leave the US.
Mr Kerry said yesterday he had little reason to fear that damaging accusations from his past could cripple his campaign for the presidency: "I’ve been pretty well, you know, vetted and examined from one side to the other and I think that [the Republicans] are in for a surprise. I’m going to fight back. I am a fighter, and I’m ready to fight back."
Away from the allegations surrounding his private life, Mr Kerry’s campaign for the Democratic nomination received another, scarcely needed, boost when his former rival General Wesley Clark endorsed him in Wisconsin.
Mr Clark predicted that Mr Kerry would "send [Republican] attack dogs home, licking their wounds".
Mr Kerry’s campaign received a further lift yesterday when a Washington Post-ABC news poll reported that he has extended his narrow lead over Mr Bush to nine points. The poll found Mr Kerry commanding 52 per cent support compared to the president’s 43 per cent. The poll also found that, for the first time, only a minority of Americans, 48 per cent, believe the war in Iraq was worth fighting.
However, Mr Kerry’s support is softer than the president’s. While 89 per cent of Mr Bush’s supporters said their support for the president was "strong", only 59 per cent of Mr Kerry’s felt the same way about their preferred candidate.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean, struggling to keep his Democratic presidential campaign alive, said yesterday it was premature to write "a post-mortem" and he remains focused on winning the White House for "ordinary Americans".
Mr Dean, the former front-runner for the Democratic nomination, rejected a suggestion he might be seen as "a sore loser" if he remained in the race, even if he suffers another in a long streak of defeats in the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday. |
