February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON
ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on
any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to
call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone
lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a
common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one
of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to
pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill
arrives.
The tales often have one other common thread. Most end
with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do
you know who I am?"
And now he's running for president as a populist. His
first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family
worth $300 million. His second wife is a
pickle-and-ketchup heiress.
Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he
has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A
fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from
parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was
removed by the city of Boston at his behest.
The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen,
and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside
"cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so
well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they
imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the
donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They later
claimed the decision was made on septic, not social, considerations).
It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He
sails Nantucket Sound in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot
Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a similar boat;
the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000.
Sen. Kerry bought it new, for cash.
Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that
Kerry elbowed out of his way on his march to the top
watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in more
primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and "the overprivileged."
"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate
President William M. Bulger used to muse on St.
Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every
sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish
at all.
But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he
was never really seen as Irish, even when he was
claiming to be (although now, of course, he says that
any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).
Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a
Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP
families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's
daughter was marrying down.
At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping,
Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say,
frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they
were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on
a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to
give a total of $135 to charity.
Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape
together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian
motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for
years, until he decided to run for president, at which
time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the
one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of
months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay
Stater.
Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."
For some of the time, he was, for all practical
purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a
real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick
resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment
of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new
car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the
dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted
for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained
that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote
out a check.
In the Senate, his record of his constituent services
has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues,
despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list
an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV
reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question,
name something John Kerry has accomplished in
Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think
of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field,
and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."
Many of his constituents see him in person only when
he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam
shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show
caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a
police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played
the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from
Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.
The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his
wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally,
he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the
eternal question.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."
John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.
Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and syndicated
talk-radio host, has been covering John Kerry for 25
years.
