John Kerry - 1996 Senate Race (Part 1 of 2 )

[angrydemocrat]

John Kerry would now face off with Massachusetts governor Bill Weld in the 1996 Senate race. Weld was a well respected Republican in Massachusetts. He had crushed his opponent Mark Roosevelt, a Democratic state legislator, to win a second term as governor. He bagged 71% of the vote in heavily Democratic Massachusetts. But Weld was fixing to find out he had met his match. He was coming up against a maverick.

Some tried to say as Kerry became accustomed to the title of senator, that Kerry had started to lose touch with his Massachusetts political infrastructure. This is a unpardonable sin in a state where politics is serious business. But in fact the out-of-touch accusation was a bad rap. For years, Kerry returned to the state most weekends, barnstormed for a week or two every summer, and made time for requisite glad-handing. The fact is Kerry was unable to be in Washington representing and working for the people of Massachusetts and actually be in Massachusetts at the same time.

Weld, with control of the state's purse strings and patronage, was already making inroads, as he had against Roosevelt, romancing Democrats at the local level. Even some senior Democratic figures were sitting out the race. A few, like former state secretary Michael Connolly, a Kerry opponent in the 1984 Senate primary, went over the partisan wall to help Weld.

By Oct. 1995, it became clear that Weld saw a path to the White House through the seat of the junior senator from Massachusetts. On Nov. 29, he declared his candidacy, slamming Kerry's support for tax increases and opposition to the death penalty and welfare reform.

In Washington, Kerry fired back, noting that Weld had declared himself a "ideological soulmate" of Newt Gingrich, the ultraconservative Speaker of the U.S. of Representatives.

Shots rang back and forth from between Boston and Washington, prompting Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle to write: "Already, Weld and Kerry make the Serbs and Muslims look like the are playing kissy-face in Bosnia. They came out scratching like a couple of fishwives, throwing a month's worth of ashcans in only five days."

It was the beginning of a political death death joust. For nearly a year, these sons of Yale and Harvard would grapple, almost without pause in the marquee Senate race in the country.

"Beyond the bare-knuckles battle between two two tall Brahmins, beyond the blood on the floor predicted by the both camps.... John Kerry and William Weld can give Massachusetts a campaign for the ages," wrote Robert L. Turner in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine in Jan., as the election year began. Kerry and Weld, Turner wrote, "represent strong new strains within their parties, strains that move away from the stereotypes of liberal, tax-and-spend Democrats and moralizing, country club Republicans that each party has long used to portray the other." Expectations for the campaign were high from the outset. Weld and Kerry would exceed them.

The would each turn in polished performances in eight televised debates. Neither combatant gave an inch of ground, as they prodded and probed for any weakness that could yield advantage. Rarely would there be consensus about who had lost any of the encounters.

Early in the contest, Weld exploited one of his major advantages. With a large State House press corps situated one floor above his office, the governor made news almost daily. Kerry meanwhile, most days was trapped in Washington, preoccupied with an ongoing partisan stalemate over the budget. Sound bite opportunities were few and far between. Every step and misstep was recorded, amplified, and dissected by the news media.

In heavily Irish Mass., there is a long tradition of political roasts and gibe fests around St. Patrick's Day. In March 1996, they took on added significance as an early test for Senate combatants. Some say Weld stole the show brimming with confidence. Kerry didn't engage Weld.

A week later at a main event in South Boston Kerry was more rested and better prepared. He received a big assist from his wife, whose white Jeep Cherokee had recently been featured in a newspaper photo illegally blocking a fire hydrant in front of their home on Louisburg Square. As Kerry rose to speak, Teresa arrived, carrying a plastic hydrant. "I was out finding parking, and I couldn't find one, so I made one," she said to loud applause. (The Kerry's paid to have the hydrant moved from in front of their home.)

In the past Kerry was perennially skewered at this South Boston event by state Senate president William M. Bulger. But in 1996, Kerry dug in on Weld. At one point, Kerry chided the governor for leaving town on a political trip the prior year rather than visiting a western Massachusetts town that had been ripped apart by a killer tornado. "Kerry really drilled him and Weld knew it" said Chris Greely Kerry's campaign manager. "It was a big moment. It's a milieu where the cards were always stacked against John, politically and culturally, but that was a very important day in the campaign," Greely said.

Less than a week later, Weld voiced his opposition to an increase in the federal minimum wage, saying it would kill jobs and harm businesses. A day earlier, Kerry had announced he would push for the increase. Weld who had earlier vetoed a bill to increase a state minimum wage, did reap some benefit. National restaurant chains opposed to the increase poured at least 23,000 into his campaign coffers through their political action committees.

On March 27, Weld made four stops around the state, signing a pledge at each to oppose any tax increases in Washington. Adding welfare reform and tough on crime component to his speech, Weld laid out what the basic themes of his senatorial campaign.

The following week Kerry's formal campaign launch. He framed the race in broader, starkly partisan terms-a fierce clash of Democratic defenders of government programs and the extreme agenda of Republicans, embodied by Gingrich, who in 1994 led the GOP to take control of the House for the first time in forty years. On the crime issue Kerry emphasized his role in providing federal funds to hire 100,000 new police officers. The first debate was held on April 8, in Bostons historic Faneuil hall.

The freewheeling debate set the themes and contours of the entire campaign. In a moment of high drama, Weld a death penalty proponent, pointed toward the mother of a slain police officer in the line of duty. "Tell her why the life of the man who murdered her son is worth more than the life of a police officer," Weld said to Kerry.

"It's not worth more," Kerry replied. "It's not worth anything. It's scum that ought to be thrown in jail for the rest of it's life." But Kerry added, "the fact is, yes, I've been opposed to the death penalty. I know something about killing." Kerry said, without having to mention Vietnam. "I don't like killing. I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing." Eight years later, Weld acknowledges that the line "I know something about killing" had an effect. For Kerry, who killed a man in combat, the death penalty was more than a abstract concept.

In late May Weld rented the billboard on the wall outside Kerry's headquarters in Boston. For the rest of the campaign, Kerry staffers could look out their windows and see Weld's rotating messages.