Heinz Kerry's style in the spotlight has handlers nervous
By Dana Wilkie
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
July 27, 2004
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BOSTON – Of all the people scheduled to speak this week at the Democratic National Convention, Teresa Heinz Kerry may be the one giving her husband's handlers the most heartburn.
Teresa Heinz Kerry
Will she fidget? Forget to smile? Lose her train of thought? Ramble? Admit to some intensely personal detail? Or worst of all, forget to talk about her husband?
Heinz Kerry has done all these things while campaigning for her husband, John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who will accept his party's presidential nomination Thursday. How she performs during her convention speech tonight might depend on just how scripted convention handlers insist she be.
After all, leaving Heinz Kerry to her own devices could result in one of those political missteps for which the candidate's wife is becoming famous.
"Teresa's performing style is different from almost anyone's out there," said Larry McCarthy, who was press secretary to Heinz Kerry's late husband, Sen. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania. "My guess is they're going to want to change her style for that night and have something well scripted . . . to make sure her speech is part of a consistent message and they know exactly what she will say. I don't think she likes to speak that way, but she may be urged to."
Pick up just about anything written on Heinz Kerry, and these are the descriptions you'll most often read:
She is open. Candid. Opinionated. Spontaneous. Unrehearsed. Unpredictable. Case in point: Minutes after urging delegates from her home state of Pennsylvania on Sunday night to restore a more civil tone to U.S. politics, she told a newspaperman to "shove it."
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page editor, Colin McNickle,asked Heinz Kerry what she meant by using the term "un-American activity." She had used the first word but not the second.
Heinz Kerry said "I didn't say that" several times to McNickle. As he continued to question her, she told him: "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
A videotape of the confrontation played on cable news stations throughout the day yesterday.
Naturally, there are many other ways to describe the 65-year-old Heinz Kerry. She is the daughter of an oncologist, a woman who grew up in Mozambique and speaks five languages. She is the widow of John Heinz, who left her with three sons and his ketchup fortune when he was killed in a helicopter crash in 1991. She is chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Heinz Family Philanthropies, which invest in the arts, environment, education, children and health care.
And she is the woman who nine years ago married the soon-to-be-nominated Democratic presidential candidate. Though a longtime Republican, she became a Democrat in 2002 after the GOP questioned the patriotism of then-Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who lost three limbs in Vietnam.
"I hope they see the woman my husband and I have known all these years," said Diana Walker, a longtime friend and a Time magazine photographer. "A woman of great intelligence, with a sizable amount of humor and compassion and zest for life . . . trying to better the lot of all of us in this country."
As a veteran of campaigns since her late husband's time in the Senate, she should be fairly polished on the stump, but she isn't. She is said to feel awkward in the spotlight. She bluntly answers personal questions – she admits to using Botox and says Wal-Mart makes her "crazy" – and speaks candidly about her beliefs.
During speeches, McCarthy said, Heinz Kerry uses "a sort of stream of consciousness" style.
"It can be mesmerizing," he said. "She pauses and actually thinks through what she's saying at the time. She has wide-ranging and eclectic interests and ways to express them."
In 1994, Heinz Kerry rocked the GOP establishment when she called the Republican nominated to replace her late husband – Rick Santorum, who won and still holds the seat – "short on public service and even shorter on accomplishments." At the time, Heinz Kerry was a Republican herself.
"It was sort of shocking," said Terry Madonna, a public policy professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn. "There's the wife of the former senator saying she didn't like the nominee of her own party. That's something not many spouses would say."
Though she will be introduced at the convention tonight as "Teresa Heinz Kerry," she never legally took her husband's name and instead remains Teresa Heinz.
"My official name is my official name," she told the Los Angeles Times last winter. "I wouldn't change one iota."
This is the sort of candor that has campaign aides nervous. On stage, Heinz Kerry also is known to get fidgety, to ramble and to tell stories that seem to have no point. She sometimes talks about her work with the environment and early childhood education but forgets to talk about her husband.
Because a nominating convention is no time for a candidate's wife to clash too obviously with her husband's well-calibrated statements, experts expect her speech to be well-rehearsed and polished.
But when the convention is over and the presidential campaign in full swing, "that's another matter," said Myra Gutin, a Rider University historian of first ladies.
"She'll probably still be impromptu and off the cuff," Gutin said. "Anything is likely to happen."
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