BOSTON -- Teresa Heinz Kerry urged her home-state delegates to the Democratic National Convention to restore a more civil tone to American politics, then minutes later told a newspaperman to "shove it."
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics," she told her fellow Pennsylvanians at a Sunday night reception at the Massachusetts Statehouse.
Minutes later, Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on exactly what she meant by the term "un-American," according to a tape of the encounter recorded by Pittsburgh television station WTAE.
McNickle said the encounter also was witnessed by reporters for the Baltimore Sun, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Heinz Kerry said "I didn't say that" several times to McNickle. She then turned to confer with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others. When she faced McNickle again a short time later, he continued to question her, and she replied, "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
The Pennsylvania delegation was the first to be visited by the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry. Before her encounter with McNickle, she criticized the tenor of modern political campaigns, without being specific.
"I remember a time when people in political parties in Pennsylvania talked to one another and actually got things done," said Heinz Kerry, whose first husband, Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, was killed in a plane crash in 1991. "We have to go back to those days when we can do things properly, for the people need it."
"My prayers for you, for me, for the country, for the world, are that we keep this at a high level, with dignity, with respect and with a great idealism and courage that took our forefathers to build this great nation," she said.
Heinz Kerry also acknowledged yesterday being nervous about her scheduled Tuesday night speech.
She said she had to practice "a speech that is written on the TelePrompTers, and I'm kind of dreading it, because I am generally unscripted."
Pennsylvania's delegation to the Democratic National Convention revived plans to attend the city-sponsored reception at the Massachusetts capitol only hours before Heinz Kerry's appearance, after the threat of union picketing by local police and firefighters faded away.
Previously, to avoid conflicts with the city police and firefighter unions protests, state party leaders had made plans to hold an alternate reception at the delegation's hotel. But they canceled the hotel event after the firefighters reached a contract accord yesterday.
