Success resonates and reels in crowds
FAIRFAX STATION, Va. -- John F. Kerry alighted from his white minivan at a primary polling station here yesterday evening and immediately found himself swarmed like a rock star by about 200 supporters.
"I drove 80 miles to get here to see you!" shrieked one Virginian.
"I just casted my first vote today -- for you!" shouted Allison Hansen, a senior at Robinson Secondary School, which was used as the polling site.
"Well thank you so, so much, thank you, that's great," Kerry replied, his voice dulled slightly by a bad cold.
"Shake the future president's hand!" Stacey Peckins shouted to her young daughter, Kate, who did.
At campaign stops here and earlier in Memphis yesterday as Virginia and Tennessee voters went to the polls, Kerry was greeted like a celebrity. And indeed, the evidence has become increasingly clear that the senator and his team see the 2004 Democratic nomination as theirs.
They have already begun discussing a series of retail-politics events in swing states in August, when most voters will need good reasons to pay attention to politics instead of the Summer Olympics. At the same time, Kerry sounds less worried about fund-raising than he was just a few weeks ago, now telling aides that he is confident Democrats will help him raise close to the $200 million war chest that Bush is expected to have for his reelection effort. Kerry aides say they have begun talking to the Secret Service about protection for the front-runner.
Kerry himself has also noted, half-jokingly, that the White House press corps will enjoy spending summers in Nantucket and winters in Ketchum, Idaho, near Kerry's two vacation homes.
Publicly, however, Kerry has tamped down any direct talk of inevitability, such as when a reporter asked him yesterday if he thought his two rivals from the South -- John Edwards and Wesley K. Clark -- should drop out if they lost in Tennessee and Virginia.
"It's not appropriate for me to be giving anyone advice -- I'm simply going to campaign from state to state and keep asking people for their votes, as I am today," Kerry said.
The star-gazing by voters began at Bob's Barksdale Restaurant in Memphis, where Kerry dropped by during the breakfast hour to shake hands with patrons. One Democrat, Roy Tyrer, hailed Kerry by saying, "Mr. President pro tem, can I have you put your John Henry right here?"
Kerry, who a month ago would have corrected any voter who seemed to take victory for granted, leaned over and signed the man's Commercial Appeal newspaper.
Nine hours later, at the polling station here in northern Virginia, Kerry was all smiles except for one moment, when a reporter asked him, "Do you prefer the comparisons to Kennedy or Dukakis?" Kerry paused and then replied coolly: "I prefer being John Kerry." A moment later, Amy Conrick pressed forward with her 8-year-old son, Eoin, and shook the senator's hand.
"This is a young fellow Irishman here," Conrick said to Kerry, patting her son's mop of brown hair. "Well, I only have a tiny piece of that, I'm afraid, you know," Kerry replied, as both he and Conrick chuckled. "Very little."
One man went so far as to ask Kerry to autograph an official-looking greeting card that had an embossed image of the White House on the cover. Kerry responded: "I can't sign that. Because I haven't been elected. I can't, I've made a practice of not signing."
The man handed Kerry a copy of Time magazine with the senator's face on the cover instead. Kerry happily signed, then went off to high-five a mob of children.
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.
