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By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political EditorHe's a supporter of gun control who hunts. After 19 years in the Senate, the leading Democratic candidate's votes can pose a paradox.
The chairman of the national Republican Party calls Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry to the left of Ted Kennedy.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean describes the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination as a "handmaiden of special interests," who often seems more like a Republican than a Democrat.
After 19 years in the Senate, the junior senator from Massachusetts and increasingly likely Democratic nominee has a vast trail of votes and quotes for critics to mine for ammunition.
"You're going to have a portion of the $170-million that Bush will have raised, plus more from the (national GOP), paying for an army of people combing through all those votes that he's cast over 19 years. No matter what, there are going to be votes that are hard to explain, and there are going to be inconsistencies," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute.
But Kerry's record and biography offer as many shades of gray as opportunities for quick labels.
Kerry is a consistent supporter of gun control who owns guns and hunts. He opposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers who sell to kids, but led an effort to put 100,000 more police on America's streets.
He voted against each of President Bush's tax cuts, but also was one of the earliest Democratic supporters of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction bill to rein in government spending. He stresses the need for government to help the least fortunate Americans, but supported welfare reform measures that pushed people off government assistance.
A Vietnam War hero who earned three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and Silver Star and then joined Jane Fonda in protesting the war, is not a man for easy pigeon-holing.
Should Kerry win the nomination, the "Taxachusetts liberal" attack is sure to come. Considering the fates of the other presidential contenders from Massachusetts - Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, Ted Kennedy - Kerry might seem easy pickings.
"Whether it's economic policy, national security policy or social issues, John Kerry is out of synch with most voters. ... Who would have guessed it? Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts," Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie said after Kerry won the Iowa caucuses.
The broad-brush liberal tag generally fits. Gillespie cited the assessment of liberal advocacy group Americans for Democratic Action, which gave Kerry a lifetime rating of 93 percent (how often he voted their position on key issues) and Kennedy a lifetime rating of 88 percent.
And other groups? The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental organization, gives Kerry a lifetime score of 96 percent. The AFL-CIO gives him a 90 percent rating. The American Conservative Union gives him a 5 percent rating and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gives him a 37 percent rating for the past six years.
But painting John Forbes Kerry, 60, as another Dukakis could be problematic. A man who spilled blood in combat wouldn't look like a joke riding in a tank. What's more, Kerry's campaign has made it clear he will fight back - hard. Surrogates already are raising pointed questions about George Bush's Air National Guard Service in Alabama and Texas during Vietnam.
On the campaign trail, Kerry bashes powerful special interests and "Benedict Arnold CEOs" who move their companies overseas. The populist tone is relatively new for Kerry, who, throughout the 1990s, often sided with centrist Democrats in supporting free trade initiatives, tax breaks for high tech companies and limits on shareholder lawsuits.
He boasts of never having accepted contributions from political action committees and supported the McCain-Feingold bill that banned unlimited "soft money" contributions to national political parties. But Kerry, like many other lawmakers, has used a special fundraising committee to take soft money contributions from corporate interests, unions and lobbyists.
Dean in particular has attacked him for taking extensive contributions from lobbyists. It's one of several areas of Kerry's record that has drawn attacks from fellow Democrats competing for the nomination.
Kerry voted for the "No Child Left Behind" education accountability bill, the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act antiterrorism initiative, each of which he has since aggressively criticized. Kerry has said it was Bush's implementation that was faulty on each of those issues.
"Regardless of the issue you throw out, his rhetoric and his record don't match," Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Reed Dickens said.
Kerry's nuanced - critics said waffling - position on the war dogged him for much of past year. In 1991, he voted against the first Gulf War, and many saw his 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq as a way to insulate him from accusations of being weak on national security. Kerry supported force in Grenada in 1983, Somalia in 1992, Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan in 1999.
Kerry said he viewed the Iraq authorization as a way to hold a threat over Saddam Hussein but that Bush rushed to war without proper planning and without adequate international support. He voted against spending an extra $87-billion on Iraq, saying it should come from rolling back tax cuts.
Republicans are painting him as soft on defense. They note that in the 1990s he consistently supported cutting the Pentagon budget.
"Unfortunately, there are people who have never met a weapons system they didn't like. I have," Kerry said recently. "If the worst thing they can do is pull out a couple of votes ... let's have at it."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many lawmakers wanted to cut military spending, but some of his positions could pose problems in the post-9/11 era. Kerry, for instance, in 1995 unsuccessfully sought to cut $1.5-billion from the intelligence budget by 2000. Soon after the Sept.11 attacks, he was on TV complaining about inadequate funding for intelligence.
On hot-button cultural issues, Republicans have plenty of artillery against Kerry. He is a consistent supporter of abortion rights, gun control, gay rights (but not gay marriage), and he has long opposed the death penalty, though more recently he said he supports it for terrorists.
Kerry's record includes opportunities to seize the center in the general election. He was talking about a dividend tax cut before Bush, for instance, and has supported federal funding for religious social service groups. In 1998, he bucked one of the most loyal Democratic constituencies, teachers unions, by calling for an "end to teacher tenure as we know it."
It's the lack of a record that could be as problematic for Kerry as the thousands of votes he has taken.
His name is attached to few major laws. Kerry has been a leader on issues ranging from POWs in Vietnam to fighting drilling in the Arctic refuge, but he has never had a reputation for crafting and pushing through legislation.
Instead, he made his name after winning election to the Senate in 1984 as a maverick investigator. Kerry dug into a host of controversial and often politically sticky matters. In the process, he antagonized some fellow lawmakers and earned the nickname "Live Shot" for his knack at getting on TV.
The former prosecutor launched probes into the Reagan administration and Oliver North illegally helping the Contra rebels in Nicaragua; into drug trafficking by Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega; and money laundering by Bank of Credit & Commerce International, which had close ties to prominent Republicans and Democrats alike.
"He is, by nature, an investigative figure," Ted Kennedy said last summer to the Boston Globe. "You can investigate and then legislate. He's investigated."
- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com