2/05/04

Howie Carr
Boston Herald

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.