'Unfit for Command' coauthor eyes Senate run against Kerry

An architect of the swift boat campaign that contributed to the derailment of John F. Kerry's presidential bid has created an exploratory committee for a run for the senator's seat in 2008.

The move, by Jerome R. Corsi, a 59-year-old author from Denville, N.J., who co-wrote the antiKerry book ''Unfit for Command," was his first formal step toward challenging the four-term junior senator from Massachusetts.

In an interview yesterday, Corsi said Kerry was not fit to be senator. He said he was ''testing the waters to see if there's enough interest to support me to make the run feasible."

Corsi has not yet registered with the Federal Election Commission, but his committee has received an employer identification number from the Internal Revenue Service, an early step that candidates for any office must take.

He said he sold an interest in US Financial Marketing Group, an insurance brokerage firm in which he was a managing partner.

Corsi said that he will consider running regardless of whether Kerry seeks reelection but that he would relocate to Massachusetts only if it were clear he could attract the financial support to mount a serious campaign.

''If I have no backing, it may not work," he said.

If Corsi does run, it would revive for Kerry perhaps the most painful episode of his failed 2004 presidential bid.

A group of Vietnam veterans called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched an extensive, well-funded campaign questioning Kerry's combat service and antiwar activities. Corsi is not a veteran, but he wrote ''Unfit for Command" with John O'Neill, a Navy veteran and ally of the Nixon White House incensed by Kerry's role in the antiwar movement.

The Kerry campaign did not immediately respond to the attacks in hopes that the issue would wither, but the swift boat message took hold and has been seen as a factor in Kerry's defeat.

Asked about a prospective Kerry-Corsi race, Kerry spokesman David Wade wrote in an e-mail yesterday, ''Although I could say plenty about Jerry Corsi, John Kerry is focused on his work for the people of Massachusetts."

Kerry has set up a Senate reelection committee, but Wade said it is too early to say whether the senator would seek a fifth term or make another White House run.

Corsi, who also writes columns for the conservative Internet news site WorldNetDaily, has drawn heat for his online screeds against Islam (which he called a ''worthless, dangerous, Satanic religion"), the pope, and leading Democrats, among others.

He apologized last year for some of the comments, and said he was just trying to be provocative during the race.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman, Philip W. Johnston, said in a statement yesterday, ''Massachusetts will not welcome a candidate whose calling card is slandering Catholics, the pope, Jews, and Vietnam veterans."

Corsi said he would soon turn his attention to fund-raising.

For now, he said, he's concentrating on a new book he has co-written about the US dependence on foreign oil, ''Black Gold Stranglehold," due out this month.

Corsi has some ties to Massachusetts. He said he spent summers in Framingham, and he lived in Boston from 1968 to 1972 while earning a doctorate from Harvard.

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.