Kerry seeks to detach from Kennedy's coattails

"In the shadow of Ted Kennedy." It's been written so often that it has become synonymous with the name of John F. Kerry.

Now, as the junior senator from Massachusetts emerges as the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, no one is trying to push him out of that shadow harder than Edward M. Kennedy himself.

Kennedy, who has known Kerry for 35 years, the last 20 as Senate seat mates, has become one of Kerry's most valuable assets in the early stages of the nomination process. But Kennedy is not only one of the most recognizable figures in the Democratic Party, he is also the leader of its atrophied liberal wing -- and thus an easy target for conservatives.

Four days after Kerry won the Iowa caucuses, Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a speech to GOP conservatives that the liberal Americans for Democratic Action had given Kerry a higher lifetime rating than Kennedy. Gillespie joked: "Who would have guessed it? Ted Kennedy is the conservative senator from Massachusetts?"

"Every side has its polarizing candidate," said Greg Mueller, a Washington-based consultant to conservative groups. "For years, it was Ted Kennedy, then the Clintons. Now, [Kennedy's] back."

In a telephone interview last week from Michigan, where he was campaigning for Kerry, Kennedy predicted that Republicans would be unsuccessful in trying to persuade voters to dismiss Kerry as a "Massachusetts liberal."

"People are tired of slogans and cliches," Kennedy said. "When people wonder about the fact that John Kerry is from Massachusetts, what they find is that he's talking about doing something about jobs and the economy, and national security, health care, and rising tuitions," Kennedy said.

After Michigan, Kennedy stumped for Kerry in Arizona and New Mexico, which vote Tuesday.

Kennedy has hosted a reception for Kerry in Washington, a clambake at the compound in Hyannisport, has attended at least eight fund-raising events for Kerry, has made untold phone calls on his behalf, and has attended at least four meetings with members of Congress, urging them to get behind his fellow Bay Stater.

He campaigned three times over four days in Iowa, including the Sunday before the caucuses. As a result, Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, sacrificed tickets to watch the Patriots win the American Football Conference championship at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, according to an aide.

Kennedy also made two trips to New Hampshire, the last a rally in Nashua, at which his son, Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, declared his support for Kerry. The younger Kennedy had supported Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri until he dropped out after a fourth-place finish in Iowa.

Perhaps more significantly, when Kerry was searching for a new campaign manager last fall after firing Jim Jordan, Kennedy agreed to loan him Mary Beth Cahill, his chief of staff. She quickly hired Stephanie Cutter, Kennedy's press secretary who had been temporarily detached to the Democratic National Convention, to take over the Kerry campaign press operation. The idea of Kerry hiring Cahill was not his; it was former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen's, Kennedy said.

Within about two weeks of Cahill's move, Kerry's campaign began to stabilize, and he started the comeback that produced big victories in Iowa and New Hampshire in the past two weeks.

Kerry deserves all the credit for his rebound, Kennedy said. "There's a shyness about Senator Kerry that sometimes comes through as sort of standoffish," Kennedy said. "But in the course of the campaign, as people have come to understand the strength of his character and his heroism, they moved in favor of him."

"I watched as John really listened to people and heard from families about their concerns and hopes and dreams," Kennedy said. "It moved him deeply, and I could hear later in the campaign when he spoke about how he would deal with these problems, there was a different resonance to his words and speech. There was a connection, and people understood it."

While the senators have often worked together on issues, there was frequent friction at the staff level. The tension may have peaked in 1999 when a Kennedy staff member tipped off a Globe reporter, who then wrote a story that Kerry, two days after indignantly decrying the poisonous effect of large unregulated political contributions, hosted a $250,000 soft-money fund-raiser at his Georgetown townhouse.

Kennedy, however, said he and Kerry have grown close in the past decade.

"The closest relationship has been between our wives, Vicki and Teresa" Heinz Kerry, Kennedy said. "And John and I have become a good deal closer. We're good social friends as well as political allies."

Since his youth, Kerry has maintained an almost reverential respect for the Kennedy family, dating back to John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign.

He and Ted Kennedy "have a friendship and respect that goes both ways," said Cahill, whose work in Kennedy's office and the Clinton White House before that are highlights of a long and varied resume in government and politics. But she said Kerry has maintained his own identity.

"They've had policy differences in the past," she said, specifically citing Kerry's early endorsement of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction act of 1985. (In a last-minute switch, Kennedy voted for it with reservations). Kerry also had a high-profile break from Kennedy in 1994 when he supported Tom Daschle of South Dakota for Senate minority leader over Kennedy's friend, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Daschle won by a single vote, in a ballot held two days after Kerry infuriated Kennedy and other party leaders by blaming Democratic "screwups" for the Republican landslide that gave the GOP control of the US House for the first time in 40 years.

Kennedy's support of Kerry has been important and constant, Cahill said, but this presidential campaign has also demonstrated that the junior senator can stand on his own two feet.

"When you win Iowa and you win New Hampshire, completely against the expectations, by coming back from the press saying you're dead, then you're your own man," Cahill said. "You've achieved something enormous on your own."

Susan Milligan of the Globe staff contributed to this report.