Stories from Kerry Past Campaigns, Very Interesting:
Then it was "touch the third rail" time. (The third rail is the hot line on subway tracks.) The son of Gen. George Patton, who had himself been fond of the Birch Society, held his own press conference and charged that Kerry had blood on his hands for leading antiwar protests that encouraged the Viet Cong and thus caused more U.S. casualties. The Doghunters sprang into action. Vallely recruited a little-known congressman from Arizona, a Vietnam War hero named John McCain, to vouch for John Kerry's valor in combat. I'll never forget Vallely telling me about McCain that day in 1984. "This guy's going to be a star," he said.
Of all the commercials I have made for Kerry, my favorite capitalized on Shamie's unflinching support for the Reagan arms buildup. Kerry, in sweater and jeans, walked through an old-time hardware store. The big political stories of the day catalogued a Pentagon spending spree, where it paid exorbitant prices for ordinary goods: $200 hammers, etc. In the commercial, Kerry displayed an item from the shelf and compared its retail price to what the military had paid. "The Pentagon paid $110 for this 10-cent diode." He looked at the camera, smiled slightly, and said: "Anyone who thinks you need to spend like this to keep America safe ... must have a screw loose." The commercial won many awards, and Kerry easily won the election.
The 1990 senate race: First-term Sen. John Kerry, like Paul Tsongas before him, struggled to find a warm place in the considerable shadow of the lion of the Senate, Edward M. Kennedy. He wasn't as liberal as Kennedy, wasn't as powerful as Kennedy, wasn't as much fun as Kennedy. Whatever people liked about Ted Kennedy, John Kerry wasn't.
In his next contest, Kerry found himself pitted against the son of a wealthy, politically connected real estate developer. Jim Rappaport spent most of the primary campaign (he faced a Republican Vietnam vet) bashing Kerry falsely for having passed no laws in his first term as senator.
When Rappaport won the primary, we were waiting for him. We began with a round of positive TV spots. Rappaport stayed on the attack. Confident we had the goods on Rappaport, we struck back. We produced a series of soap-opera-style TV spots called "The Life of James Rappaport." My favorite was called "We Buy a Cow From Ourselves," which tells the story of one Rappaport getting a tax break for swapping ownership of a prized cow with another Rappaport. Each spot ended with footage of Jim Rappaport winking.
After the spots had been on for a week, Rappaport called for a cease-fire on negative ads. The Kerry campaign's response: Too late, pal; the spots stay on. At the same time, newspapers all over Massachusetts were slamming Rappaport's campaign tactics in columns and editorials. We pulled them together in one full-page newspaper ad nicknamed "Slimeball," the word one Boston columnist had used to describe his campaign.
While Rappaport outspent him, Kerry outsmarted Rappaport at every turn. In their final debate, on a hunch or a tip, Kerry demanded to know which taxes Rappaport had been accusing him of raising. On live TV, Rappaport could not name a single one. Game over. Kerry won with 57 percent of the vote.
In 1996, Kerry faced the toughest opponent of his political life, the charming, shrewd and resourceful Bill Weld. Republicans hoped that Weld, who had won a second term as governor with 71 percent in a state where Democrats enjoy a near monopoly, would unseat Kerry using his incumbency and good relations with the press. The Kerry campaign called it the "21 press secretaries" problem. Weld could make news any day, every day. |
