"Kerry's personal life, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly tumultuous. He had separated from his first wife, Julia Thorne, in 1982, and the divorce became final in 1988. For much of their marriage, Julia, who came from a wealthy Long Island family, had provided significant financial contributions. The divorce left Kerry strapped for cash and looking for ways to meet child-support payments, campaign debts, and tuition costs.
He took out a $473,000 loan to purchase a home in Washington, thinking his daughters would be staying with him for periods of time. It was "a huge mistake," he says, as he found himself returning to Boston most weekends to maintain his ties to his children and the state. He sold the D.C. home and bought a Boston condo but "lost his shirt" when he sold it a few years later, as he told the Globe in 1996. "He was broke," Blum says.
To make ends meet, Kerry collected speaking fees, averaging about $1,400 apiece and $26,000 a year total during his first five years in the Senate. Most of the honoraria were from think tanks and schools; some were paid by trade associations such as the Massachusetts Bankers Association or corporations such as Goldman Sachs and Chevron, which had legislative interests before Congress.
Kerry pocketed another $21,000 in a low-risk real estate deal in 1986, arranged by his campaign treasurer, developer Wesley Finch. In a business brochure the next year, Finch boasted about his relationship with Kerry, stating he "works closely with the senator and his colleagues on tax and economic issues that come to the floor of the United States Senate."
Finch had cut in his friends, Kerry and his then-Senate aide, Ronald Rosenblith, on an investment in condominium units in Salem and Clinton. One of the units was already under a purchase-and-sales agreement by the time Finch brought in Kerry and Rosenblith as partners, the Globe reported in 1996, although all three said Finch never informed them of that. The Globe calculated their profit at 31 percent in about six months.
Kerry has long maintained he never used his influence on Finch's behalf, but he did acknowledge he was stung by the press reports on the deal and soured on investments after that. "I thought it was legitimate," Kerry said of the deal. But "I found that the inquiries made me profoundly uncomfortable, and I never invested again in the 11 years after that . . . I have never since invested one penny in anything" as exotic.
Kerry acknowledges money "was tight" for him in those days. "I was spending all I had," he says. Regarding honoraria, which Congress banned in 1991, Kerry says: "I did not take honoraria from anyone who had anything in front of my committee."
Kerry also signed on as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the fund-raising arm for Senate Democrats, for the 1987-1988 cycle. This would help him tap the network of national Democratic donors.
Kerry's current wife, Teresa Heinz, calls the late 1980s his "gypsy period." For months at a time he had no fixed address and crashed instead with his daughters when Julia was away or with Julia's brother David.
Sometimes, he stayed with a girlfriend who had been his former law partner, Roanne Sragow, now a district court judge in Massachusetts. (She declined to be interviewed.) Or he stayed with a Vietnam buddy or on a per diem basis in condos owned by wealthy contributors: developers Finch and Edward W. Callan, and lobbyist and campaign fund-raiser Robert Farmer. Eventually, he rented a one-room apartment in Washington and an apartment in Boston.
During this period, Kerry was linked romantically with several Hollywood starlets, including Morgan Fairchild, and his dating life became fodder for gossip columnists in Boston and Washington. Kerry declined to discuss this period of his social life, other than to make this reference to the 2000 presidential campaign, in which then-candidate George W. Bush confessed only to unnamed youthful indiscretions.
"If George Bush can run around and say `When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible,' " says Kerry. "I can say when I was young and single, I was young and single." "
Here's a link to Part 6, which is where this link is from:
Links to parts 1-5 are on the right side of the web page, as well as a link for Kerry's life in pictures.
There's a sense among Democrats that their ideas and ideals matter most and the ways they get their money are relatively unimportant (perhaps because all business is thought to be tainted), but if sex scandals are held more against Republicans because they are assumed to belong to the party of sexual morality, surely shady money deals ought to be regarded as more hypocritical among Democrats who claim to represent a higher and nobler attitude towards commerce and finance.
Morgan Fairchild gave money to Edwards, Gephardt, and Dean before Kerry became the front runner. Afterwards, she did give money to Kerry, but it's interesting that he was far from her first choice.
He basically used Roanne Sragow for room and board while he cheated on her with Morgan Fairchild and others.
But Kerry, G.W. Bush matured into a responsible adult-while you remain a gigolo playboy into your old age.
Comparing yourself to Bush, is like comparing horse sh*t to horse radish.
You don't get a half mil loan on your looks so either he lied to get the loan or he had the means to pay. He was getting a paycheck. He just likes $6000 bikes etc..