Kerry Heinz offers a critique of husband's rivals
Cites electability of Mass. senator
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 11/21/2003
boston.com
NASHUA -- With her trademark bluntness, Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of the Massachusetts Democratic presidential hopeful, took swipes yesterday at rival Richard A. Gephardt's foreign-affairs knowledge, Wesley K. Clark's diplomatic skills, and front-runner Howard Dean's ability to govern.
"[Representative] Dick Gephardt's very good, but he's not in[to] foreign relations," Senator John F. Kerry's wife said in an interview amid a tour of Latino shops and restaurants. "And General Clark certainly knows how to make war very well -- he's brilliant -- but he's not a diplomat."
As for Dean, who leads her husband by a double-digit margin in early-voting New Hampshire, Heinz Kerry credited the former Vermont governor with the "smart move" of beginning his own campaign TV ads last summer, but added, "Having said that, it's one thing to be appealing; it's another thing to govern."
Heinz Kerry said her husband's campaign will be rejuvenated with a stream of new television advertising and the growing realization among voters that the Massachusetts Democrat is the most qualified candidate in the field to be president.
A daughter of the east African nation of Mozambique, the 64-year-old Heinz Kerry moved freely during a pair of stops in Nashua and Manchester, engaging passersby and customers in her native Portuguese or in Spanish or French, three of the five languages she speaks. She said it was her international perspective, and the international challenges facing the nation in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that buttress her belief that Kerry is the best equipped of the 2004 candidates to be president.
A Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, Kerry is the son of a foreign service worker and has been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 19 years.
"I think John, having come from abroad as I did, that John is the one candidate . . . that tomorrow could go to the well of the United Nations and stand there and have the trust and respect of other nations because of his work, because of his knack for diplomacy, and because he understands conflict and prevention," she said.
Over the course of her conversation with reporters, Heinz Kerry displayed an intimate knowledge not only of the inner workings of her husband's campaign, but of the overall 2004 race.
She said Kerry's campaign was caught off guard by Dean's decision to break out of the federally financed primary campaign system, which sets varying limits on advertising spending in each primary and caucus state. Dean announced this month that he would not take federal primary funds, freeing him to spend as much as he wants on ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early states.
Kerry, who had not matched Dean's early ad spending to preserve his campaign cash for the end of the campaign, followed by announcing he, too, would refuse federal funds. Instead, he will use his own multimillion-dollar fortune to loan his campaign the money it needs to match Dean's heavy spending.
"It's unfortunate he was not on the air, either radio or something, during the summer," she said of her husband. "Had we known we weren't going to [abide by the spending caps], we would have run a different campaign."
Heinz Kerry deflected criticism that her husband's new campaign spending would fuel an elitist perception, noting that Kerry was planning to hold overall expenditures to $45 million, the cap for those remaining within the federal system. Whatever personal money he injects will allow him to bypass the spending caps in some states, but not that overall limit, Kerry's campaign has said. "[New York] Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg spent $80 million to get elected. Senator [Jon] Corzine spent $60 million to become senator. George Bush is going to spend $200 million in a primary that doesn't exist, and those monies come from very, very rich people who get a lot of favors," Heinz Kerry said. "John is doing only what he -- because he was trapped into a new set of circumstances -- was forced to do."
Heinz Kerry, indicated she had been paying close attention to Dean's campaign. She noted he had hired "a smart young man from Utah" to design his website and credited him with tapping the anger of disenchanted Democrats with his vocal antiwar stance.
Yet she argued that her husband was more electable, noting he had three or four times more endorsements among Iowa state legislators than Dean and Gephardt -- combined.
"Those are savvy people," Heinz Kerry said of the lawmakers. "They would not be endorsing John Kerry, even as late as this past week, if they didn't think that he had a chance and that he was a sound candidate that could beat Bush."
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
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