Kerry back on trail four years after bid

WORCESTER, Mass. | The week before the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Sen. John Kerry drafted his presidential-nomination speech and then set off on a cross-country trip that brought him home to thousands of delegates waiting in Boston.

Four years later, the senator was back on the stump in the second-largest city in Massachusetts, seeking the votes of 60 people who had been lured to a restaurant with a free lunch and Greek pastries.

Times have changed, but the Massachusetts senator insists he’s as committed to seeking re-election to the Senate this fall as he was to campaigning for the White House four years ago.

“It’s a different field, if you will, but it’s no less important,” Mr. Kerry said Aug. 18. “It’s a privilege to represent this state, particularly. We have a great tradition here: Ted Kennedy and going back to John (Quincy) Adams.”

The senator voted in 2002 to authorize military force in Iraq but argued during his unsuccessful 2004 campaign against President Bush that war could have been avoided with more adept foreign policy.

The blend of local and national issues in Mr. Kerry’s campaign-trail rhetoric highlights the balancing act he faces as he seeks his fifth Senate term.

His campaign speech sounds little different than in 2004. Since then, events at home and abroad have given resonance to his calls for energy independence and a redeployment of U.S. military forces away from Iraq.

“Twelve billion dollars a month - a month - are being spent a in place where there was no al Qaeda, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And the place where there is al Qaeda and there are weapons of mass destruction - Pakistan and Afghanistan - they have ignored sufficiently that it’s now at great risk,” the senator told his Worcester audience.

Critics cite his presidential campaign as proof that Mr. Kerry’s focus has wandered well beyond his home state - a charge given potency by the famed constituent-service operation of the senior senator from Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy.

With Mr. Kennedy ailing with a malignant brain tumor, Mr. Kerry now faces questions about whether he could uphold that tradition.

For the first time since being elected in 1984, Mr. Kerry has a challenger in the Democratic primary. He squares off Sept. 16 with a little-known Gloucester lawyer, Edward O’Reilly. And unlike 2002, when Mr. Kerry was unopposed in the general election, the Republicans have nominated their own Senate candidate this year: Jeff Beatty, a former CIA operative and member of the Army’s elite Delta Force.

At the same time, Mr. Kerry has become enmeshed in the 2008 presidential race. He endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama just after the Illinois senator suffered a stinging loss to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, a risky move.

That support, along with Mr. Kerry’s choice of Mr. Obama as the 2004 convention keynote speaker, have fueled speculation Mr. Kerry might join an Obama administration, possibly as secretary of state.

The senator will address the 2008 convention Wednesday during a segment focused on securing the nation’s future. And he is campaigning with gusto, crisscrossing Massachusetts to hold “Kerry On Your Corner” town-hall meetings.

He’s also on statewide television with his first - and possibly only - primary commercial, a feel-good spot in which a wounded war veteran recounts how Mr. Kerry arranged for him to throw out the first pitch at Fenway Park on Patriots Day.