Posted on 07/26/2004 11:13:06 PM PDT by ijcr
Stymied by dirty ad campaigns, accusations of campaign spending violations and nasty verbal attacks, the contest for the American presidency is becoming vicious.
But it's not presidential candidate John F Kerry who has President George W Bush fuming, it is Kerry's wife, the wealthy and outspoken Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Termed "Kerry's gold'' and his "secret weapon'', she is also contrasted as his "Achilles' heel'', a "ticking time bombette'' and a "loose cannon''.
As the spouse of a presidential candidate, it is unclear what effect Heinz Kerry will have on her husband's campaign.
Some regard her as warm and vibrant, bringing a softness to Kerry.
Others say she is detracting attention from the presidential hopeful, which could cost him the Oval office.
The outspoken Heinz Kerry nevertheless remains the most compelling figure in the presidential campaign.
Born Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira in Maputo, Mozambique, when the country was still a Portuguese colony, the young Heinz Kerry attended a strict Catholic boarding school in apartheid South Africa.
She graduated from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, with a degree in romance languages and literature.
The multilingual Heinz Kerry speaks fluent Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Italian.
Proud of her African upbringing, Heinz Kerry boasts that she marched against apartheid at university and has courted controversy in Mozambique and the US by referring to herself as "African American'' and a "Third Worlder''.
While attending graduate school at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva, with classmate Kofi Annan, the Portuguese daughter of Africa met her first husband, John Jack Heinz III.
Heinz, a Harvard student on secondment at a Swiss bank for the summer, told her his father made soup. When they fell in love, she discovered he was the sole heir to the soup and ketchup fortune of Henry J Heinz.
Heinz Kerry spent a further year in Africa grieving the death of her sister, after which she moved to the US to work at the United Nations as a language consultant.
The couple married in 1966 and had three sons, John, Andre and Christopher. She told a Boston Magazine reporter that she breast-fed the boys at a time when it wasn't fashionable: "Just for two months, but at least they got the colostrum,'' she said.
She became a naturalized US citizen in 1971 when Heinz was elected to Congress as a Republican senator for Pennsylvania. When he considered running for president, she famously told him: "Over my dead body.''
Heinz died in 1991, when his small aircraft collided with a helicopter over a Philadelphia school-yard. His wife became one of the world's richest widows, with a personal fortune of over $500 million and control of the $1.2 billion Heinz family endowments.
Heinz Kerry rejected an offer to assume her husband's seat in the Senate, preferring to direct the philanthropes towards the environment, children's education, women's affairs and healthcare.
Married for 25 years, she still refers to Heinz as "the love of my life'' and since remarrying, has referred to Heinz as her husband in the present tense during a number of interviews.
It was the love of her life who introduced her briefly to her second husband, John Forbes Kerry, at an Earth Day rally in Washington in 1990.
Addressing environmental leaders in California last February, Heinz Kerry said: "And so I met my late husband. No, I met my first husband. No, my first husband introduced me to my late husband. No, wait. What am I saying? And I haven't even had any wine.''
Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, lawyer and elected Senator for Massachusetts since 1984, divorced from his first wife, Philadelphia heiress Julia Thorne, in 1988.
He was linked to a number of actresses including Morgan Fairchild, Cornelia Guest, Catherine Oxenberg and President Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis, as well as a 25-year-old British reporter, before meeting Heinz Kerry.
The two met again at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where she was a delegate named by then president George Bush. A year later they began dating and married in May 1995.
When asked about her financial agreement with Kerry in an interview for Elle Magazine she said: "Everybody has a prenup. You have to have a prenup.
"You've got three kids with somebody else; you've got to have a prenup. You could be as generous or as sensitive as you want. But you have to have a prenup.''
She also admitted to undergoing regular Botox treatments: "In fact I need another one. Soon.'' When asked about cosmetic surgery she said: "When I need it, I'll get it.'' And said she'd like to fix her nose, which has become "bulbier'' with age.
When Kerry began to consider his presidential ambitions in 2000, Heinz Kerry admits to being uncomfortable about the idea.
"The world stage, you know, I was just scared of it,'' she said in a brief interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I mean it's hard work. It's a huge responsibility; a loss of privacy, a certain kind of privacy, anyway. And it's not a normal life. I like to be normal.''
Years earlier, she told a reporter that she thought being first lady would be worse than going to a Carmelite convent. However, she backed her husband when he threw his hat in the ring for the presidency. Taking his name and joining the campaign effort, she nevertheless remained controversial.
"Politically, it's going to be Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I don't give a shit, you know?'' she said in an interview. "Swearing is a good way to relieve tension,'' she added.
A moderate Republican for almost 30 years, Heinz Kerry relented last year and became a Democrat to vote for her husband.
Kerry has appeared quite taken with his wife's public commentary, telling journalists: "I'm not going to worry about it. She is my wife. She is who she is. I love her for her outspokenness, and I think it's kind of charming and honest. I think people like honesty.''
His campaign team, however, is not so enamoured and are said to wince visibly when she takes to the stage. In recent months, journalists and friends have noted that her speeches stick more to the carefully prepared script.
Kerry's team has also had to allay fears about who would rule the roost if Kerry won the November election.
Kerry told reporters: "Americans know what they don't want in a first lady: They don't want somebody who's trying to have a job, who's trying to force themselves into public policy. And Teresa has neither desire nor intention of doing that. We're not running around offering people a twofer.''
Apart from her independent personality, Heinz Kerry's wealth has also played a controversial role in her husband's campaign.
Dogged by suggestions that she is paying for her husband's race, the Kerry campaign team has pointed out that under federal law she can only contribute $2,000 to the effort. (If personally attacked, however, she has the right to use her fortune to mount a defence.)
Kerry is also wealthy in his own right, as the son of Rosemary Forbes Kerry, a member of the Forbes shipping family and a descendent of John Winthrop, who helped found Boston in 1630. When his mother died in 2002, Kerry inherited trusts with assets from $300,000 to $1.5 million.
More worrisome to the Kerry camp is last week's move by the Bush team and the Republican National Committee. They filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission accusing Kerry and pro-Kerry groups of violating campaign spending laws.
It is claimed Kerry's campaign team illegally coordinated political advertisements and get-out-the-vote activities with independent groups.
Federal law prevents corporations, unions and individual donors from using soft-money to influence federal elections. Although she wasn't named personally, the attack is believed to be directed at Heinz Kerry.
Along with commitments to her husband's campaign, she chairs and is on the board of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira Heinz Endowment respectively. The non-profit organisations allegedly donated some $4million to theTides Centre and Tides Foundation between 1998 and 2001.
The Tides Foundation is the parent group of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. The pacifist group was formed specifically to oppose the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The group, claiming to represent the families of September 11 victims, has been fiercely critical of Bush's re-election campaign adverts, which contain fleeting imagery of the attacks.
Peaceful Tomorrows claimed the ads exploit the terrorist attacks for political gain and generated national anger towards the president's television campaign.
With the help of Heinz Kerry's donations, the Tides Foundation spends millions annually sponsoring radical groups that protest against the war in Iraq, demand US borders be opened, provide legal aid to suspected terrorists and bankroll lawsuits against the federal government.
Heinz Kerry told reporters: "My foundation is an open book.
"It's been scrutinised.''
Heinz Kerry also supports groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, which is the "political nexus of the environmental movement, with a board of directors that reaches deep into the nation's famous or wealthy elite,'' according to the LA Times. The league endorsed Kerry in January.
Democrats are worried Heinz Kerry's wealth and philanthropic work could shape Kerry's political agenda and create even more baggage for him.
Heinz Kerry remains defiant: "A politician's wife has a hard life,'' she told the New York Post.
"In the old days they only lived for their men. Today we can have a broader, richer life. The partner must have her own set of interests.
"Children, career, something. It's needful to have a sense of one's self. I work six days a week on my own interests and will always continue. To become more of a thing and less of a person is terrible.''
Her wealth is giving the Kerry camp a headache for other reasons too. Kerry, who in the past has called for full disclosure of rivals' tax returns, is under pressure to release his wife's records.
But the feisty Heinz Kerry is adamant: "This is my life, my business, not John's,'' she is reported to have told a campaign staff member. "I think it is very important to keep the privacy zone. There is a tradition of this.''
Her chief of staff, Jeff Lewis, told reporters: "As she is not a candidate for any office, she will not be making additional disclosures.''
Kerry may once have been charmed by his wife's public persona and seen her as an asset to his chances for presidential success. But as his wife continues to attract intense media interest, the Senator could see his dreams of becoming JFK 2 vanish quickly.
No doubt he's praying events in the Middle East and the June 30 deadline for handing over power to the Iraqis will land Bush in the pickle and allow Heinz Kerry take a back-seat in his push for the presidency.
When will a daring reporter ask The Democratic Ozzie and Harriet what they would do about the Oil for Food scandal?
I saw him wearing his secret weapon.. uh, "bunny suit" today. Should be a real winner.
A $ billion worth of warmth and vibrancy
John Kerry is not his own man, he has been bought out by Heinz-Kerry. She rules him, and she has the money.
So even after ten years of marriage she still doesn't trust him with her money... but she pretends that America can trust him with our entire country.
LOL - I'll bet they have the order of events backwards in that sentence!
REDID TAG LINE
FINAL
Where is the evidence in the article for this statement? Tina Marie appears to be having feverish dreams about Teraza.
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