TERESA FIGHTS TO KEEP HER TAX RETURNS PRIVATE
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU APRIL 15, 2004 11:04:27 ET XXXXX
**Exclusive**
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who has called for full-disclosure of rivals' tax returns, now faces growing pressure to release his wife's records.
But in a Tax Day controversy, Teresa Heinz Kerry is personally determined to keep her returns out of public view -- at any cost!
"This is my life, my business, not John's," Mrs. Kerry recently explained to a campaign staffer, a top source tells the DRUDGE REPORT. "I think it is very important to keep the privacy zone. There is a tradition of this."
GHOST OF FERRARO
Top Kerry campaign staffers fear Heinz Kerry will not be able to hold back calls for a public release, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Staffers have been studying the '84 presidential campaign, when former Dem VP Candidate Geraldine Ferraro conceded release of her husband's tax returns, but only after an excruciating media fight!
Ferraro said that when she asked her husband, John Zaccaro, to release the returns his reaction was, "I won't tell you how to run the country and don't you tell me how to run my business."
Asked by reporters why Zaccaro was opposed to releasing his tax return, she said, "He feels his business interests would be affected."
That summer, a NEW YORK TIMES editorial hit Ferraro for refusing to disclose her husband's returns: "Disclosing tax returns, as originally promised, would not amount to telling Mr. Zaccaro how to run his business."
HEINZ ASSETS USED TO BOOST CAMPAIGN
In December '03, Kerry announced that he loaned his campaign $6.4 Million by mortgaging a share of a Boston home he jointly owns with his wife.
Teresa Heinz Kerry paid cash for the Beacon Hill mansion in January 1995.
But according To Kerry's own 1994 senate personal financial disclosure [signed May, 15, 1995], Kerry's own personal net worth was somewhere between a negative $130,000 to positive $34,995.
The current loan on the house carries an annual interest payment of $200,000, records show, more than Kerry's $158,000 Senate salary.
Kerry's campaign insists he intends to pay off the 30-year mortgage himself.
"Sen. Kerry is a man who has considerable assets," spokesman Michael Meehan explains.
But Kerry's own financial disclosures show no assets sufficient to pay the loan -- or even a way to keep up with the interest payments!
KERRY: CLEAR THE AIR
Besides a blurring of Heinz-Kerry assets, the campaign is also wresting with past quotes made by Kerry himself.
In his 1990 Senate race, Kerry asked his challenger to "clear the air" by releasing tax returns.
"I think people want to know whether someone they possibly might send to Washington to represent them in the Senate is someone who pays their fair share of taxes,'" Kerry said. "Why is James Rappaport hiding his tax returns?" Kerry asked. "Why is it some people can live up to that standard and he can't? It seems to me that he ought to be able to release those returns and clear the air...
"Why doesn't he just release them? What is he hiding?"
And at the height of last year's primary race, Kerry vowed that "openness" would be the "hallmark" of his administration.
"As president, openness will be the hallmark of my administration, not some talking point... The highest office in the land requires the highest level of openness for the American people."
Developing...
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Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
drudgereport.com for updates
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