Kerry may make GOP wealth a campaign issue
Democrat contender says he won't rule out using his own funds
boston.com
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 4/23/2003
If Republicans forge ahead with plans to spend $200 million or more on President Bush's reelection campaign, Senator John F. Kerry would make it a campaign issue and would not rule out tapping his personal wealth to compensate, he said yesterday.
The Democratic presidential contender, who recently reported $8 million cash on hand in his campaign kitty, said that if the Republicans double the amount they spent on their 2000 campaign, it would confirm the party as the handmaiden to the wealthiest Americans.
''I believe the Republican Party has already proven that it is prepared to bargain off, auction off, use the political process to service their special interests,'' the Massachusetts senator said after an Earth Day speech at the Vine Street Community Center in Roxbury.
''If they want to spend $200 million from their very wealthy and specialized interests, I think that would become a major issue about the kind of government we have in this country and where we're going.''
While Kerry's personal wealth is limited, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has a family fortune that has been assessed as worth $550 million or more. Federal election law makes it unlikely she could transfer the bulk of that money to Kerry, but in the past, both he and his wife have said they would consider tapping the reserve if either one was attacked personally in a campaign.
As recently as last month, Kerry restated his interest in financing his own campaign. Asked yesterday whether he might give more consideration to that idea in light of a report about the Bush administration's reelection plans, the senator said haltingly: ''I'm going to, as I've said all along, I'm going to reserve, I don't have any special plans right now.''
The New York Times reported yesterday that Bush advisers are quietly preparing the president's reelection campaign. In line with other recent reports, the newspaper said the effort would be spearheaded by the president's top political adviser, senior counselor Karl Rove, and financed with $200 million or more in campaign donations.
Such a figure would double the $100 million Bush spent winning the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, and Kerry said yesterday he believed even the $200 million goal would be exceeded. Both the Republican and Democratic nominees are slated to get $75 million apiece from the federal treasury to finance their general election campaigns after they are formally nominated at their party conventions during the summer of 2004.
Quoting unnamed advisers, the Times said the Bush campaign considers Kerry the most likely to win the Democratic nomination from the current field of nine candidates. The Bush team also believes Kerry is vulnerable because of his Northeastern roots and patrician air.
''He looks French,'' the newspaper quoted one adviser as saying, without elaboration.
Kerry said he laughed when he read the comment, adding: ''It means that the White House has started the personal politics of destruction, that's what it means, but it's fine.
His wife, a former Republican, was less charitable, saying: ''It's like kids on a playground, and they don't know what to say because they don't have the thought process defined or the language. They call each other names; they know how to say those. But adults should explain what they mean.''
Asked whether she thought the comment impugned her husband's masculinity or patriotism, since France opposed the war effort in Iraq, Heinz Kerry said: ''They can't take him on on patriotism; that they can't do. And I guess if they want to call the French `not manly,' I don't know, but they have to deal with the French on that.''
Kerry's speech was preceded by a roundtable discussion in which 14 Roxbury residents and area political activists discussed a variety of health problems they attributed to the concentration of pollution sources in their neighborhood. Klare Allen of Roxbury held up a map showing that eight of the city's nine trash-transfer stations are in the neighborhood. Many of the parents and some of the children in the group complained of asthma.
''Until I went to Washington, I had never had asthma in my life,'' Kerry said in response. He said pollution in the city has prompted him to use an inhaler like those used by some of Roxbury residents.
In an interview afterward, Kerry clarified his remark by explaining that he used an Albuterol inhaler for common springtime allergies, but his condition is not serious enough to limit his physical activity. ''I rarely use it; I haven't used it in months,'' he said.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 4/23/2003.
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