Heinz Kerry Comment Gains Long-Dreaded Attention

By JIM RUTENBERG

BOSTON - It was exactly what many Democrats had dreaded: Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate's wife, running off the carefully laid rails at the Democratic National Convention here.

On Monday, prevailing images on cable news were not of Senator John Kerry throwing the first pitch at Fenway Park the night before, but those of his wife laying into the editor of a conservative newspaper and telling him to "shove it" before a horde of other journalists. As Mr. Kerry and his aides began what they have billed as a four-day showcase for the candidate's "positive vision for America," they were repeatedly forced to explain his wife's comment.



Then, Mrs. Heinz Kerry took on a staff member. In an interview to be aired Tuesday on NPR, she disowned a pumpkin spice cookie recipe that had been submitted to Family Circle magazine for a bakeoff between her and Laura Bush. "Someone had made it on purpose to give a nasty recipe," she said.

All in all, it was not an atypical 24 hours for Mrs. Heinz Kerry, the billionaire philanthropist who has shown a flair for saying whatever she thinks, whenever she thinks it, in a way that is wholly foreign to the political operatives overrunning this city this week.

When Mrs. Heinz Kerry addresses the convention here Tuesday night, it will be the culmination of a months- long journey for her and her husband's campaign staff in which a "let Teresa be Teresa" philosophy has come to prevail. In part, aides say, that is because she is among the best promoters of her husband, but also because there is no other choice.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry has had a net positive effect on the campaign, infusing it with some welcome spontaneity and excitement, current and former campaign aides say. But it has not come without some jostling for her husband and his staff members, who have learned over the course of several hard months to deal with her unpredictability.

Some campaign staff members had misgivings about Mrs. Heinz Kerry's potential effect on the campaign from nearly the beginning, for several reasons.

Born of Portuguese parents in Mozambique, educated in Switzerland and South Africa, her accent - best described as pan-European with a hint of Africa - was not considered a draw for the crucial voting bloc Howard Dean coined "the guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

Then, there was her fortune, now estimated at $1 billion - an enviable back-up campaign kitty that, some feared, could potentially give Mr. Kerry the air of a hanger-on nonetheless.

But, most worrisome of all, there was her personal style.

"There was a feeling early on," said a former staff member, "that she was a liability: The fact that she was from another country, the fact that she wasn't programmed, wouldn't stay on script."



Another former adviser to Mr. Kerry added: "The conundrum was, 'Do you just let her go out there and do her thing or not?' The other choice was to try to jump in and really manage it."

Mr. Kerry, during a telephone interview in June, played down nervousness about his wife among his staff. "I think this, quote, nervousness, has been overexaggerated, and rumored," he said, "and perhaps someone in the campaign had that sense or something, but it's never been a campaign view, or my view."

But Mrs. Heinz Kerry more readily acknowledged it during an interview at the campaign's headquarters in June.

"I tell you something: I would say probably any campaign in this town would have had a hard time figuring out how to use me because they were not used to having someone with my clout, or baggage, or whatever - or experience," she said. She continued, nearly stream of consciousness-like, "Do you feel that you're being railroaded, or do you feel that you're being absorbed - do you feel inferior, or do you feel superior? What is it you feel? So I think any campaign would have had to adjust to that, because most spouses that have come in have kind of fitted into whatever it is."

She added, "I can't be packaged, I won't be packaged. If I have to be packaged, then I can't be part of the process."

She made that clear early on, when, in early 2003 a new public relations handler assigned to her submitted a memorandum detailing how she could take better care with her makeup and hair before television appearances.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry rejected the advice angrily, offended by what she saw as an effort to turn her into someone she was not, several people familiar with the incident said.

That was not the first time Mr. Kerry's campaign ran afoul of his wife, especially when it was under the management of Jim Jordan, who was fired in November.

Several former and current staff members said Mrs. Heinz Kerry was eager to get out and speak on behalf of the campaign and felt as if Mr. Jordan did not do enough to use her on the stump or in the news media. Mr. Jordan's supporters and detractors agree that if he had had a better relationship with Mrs. Heinz Kerry he may have survived, or, at least, survived longer, in his job.



Mrs. Heinz Kerry was reluctant to comment too much on her view of Mr. Jordan, at one point saying flatly, "I don't know Jim Jordan very much at all.''

Mr. Jordan's successor, Mary Beth Cahill, certainly made her available to the news media and on the stump far more often, especially this past spring.

She sat for a prime-time, one-on-one interview with Barbara Walters and was the willing subject of cover articles in Newsweek and People and of a CBS Evening News profile.

"She is exactly what she seems to be, she is her husband's best asset,'' Ms. Cahill said during a breakfast with reporters held by The Christian Science Monitor here on Monday. "The way that she talks about him is one of the strongest views into him - his character - that it's possible to give, and we think that she's great."

People at the campaign said they became more comfortable with Mrs. Heinz Kerry as they saw her success on the speaking circuit, where she mixes deep policy knowledge on environmental and health care issues - honed as the head of the Heinz family endowments - with a casual speaking style.

After the spring, aides said they were pleased with her discipline at staying on message. "She's been disciplined and smart,'' Mr. Jordan, who would not otherwise comment on his relationship with her, said in early July. "Her press has been great, and she's been an altogether terrific asset.''

To be sure, Mrs. Heinz Kerry can connect especially well with women, even those who would be able to provide two week's worth of groceries for their families at the cost of a pair of Mrs. Heinz Kerry's Chanel shoes. At a meeting with mostly poor community leaders on the North Campus of Miami-Dade Community College in late June, she at once delighted the women-only crowd and made herself wholly relatable by saying, "At the end of the day, no one asks a woman, 'Do you need a neck rub? Do you need a drink, honey?' '' Her off-the-cuff, politically incorrect sense of humor, which has gotten her into trouble in the national news media, can also get real laughs, as it did at another recent women's group meeting in Orlando, when she said of China, "Of course, they have more people than ants there.''

Her interaction with the conservative writer occurred after she addressed the Democratic delegation from Pennsylvania, where she maintains her residence. Mrs. Heinz Kerry had told the audience, "We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics.'' After the speech, the editorial page editor of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Colin McNickle, asked Mrs. Heinz Kerry what she meant by "un-American,'' prompting Mrs. Heinz Kerry to argue that she had never used the term and eventually saying angrily, "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."

The line did not go over well with some delegates here. "I think it could hurt her,'' The Associated Press quoted a delegate from Memphis, Lexie Carter, as saying. "I'm not sure how it will play but I'm coming down on the side of 'it's O.K., but let's cool it - keep a level head, girl.' ''



Mr. Kerry's campaign aides, by now accustomed to finessing his wife's more lively moments, tried to use them to their advantage. And they and their surrogates said she was merely venting at a conservative newspaper that has been critical of her for years. It is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, a prominent supporter of the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups.

"She was approached by a conservative local rag that over the years has consistently misrepresented her and her family,'' said Debra DeShong, a campaign spokeswoman. "And she's always going to stand up for herself when she feels like someone misrepresenting the truth.''

Senator Hillary Clinton, no stranger to conservative media as a candidate's wife, went one better: "A lot of Americans are going to say, 'Good for you, you go, girl,' and that's certainly how I feel about it.''

Speaking in Florida, Mr. Kerry said, "I think my wife speaks her mind appropriately.''

Either way, the incident renewed questions about whether she would continue to be the free campaign spirit she has been so far. During the interview in June, Mr. Kerry had been emphatic that she would not be reined in. "The folks in our campaign are thrilled with what she's doing," he said. "They're going to let Kerry be Kerry and let Teresa be Teresa, and that's the way we're campaigning, and they don't have any choice in the matter. How's that?''

The New York Times 2004