Aides nurture Kerry's appeal

NEW YORK -- Douglas Paulson, an out-of-work actor who once supported Howard Dean for president and admires the Rev. Al Sharpton and Dennis J. Kucinich for expressing "overlooked opinions," now says he is "90 percent certain" he will vote for John F. Kerry in today's New York primary.

He isn't precisely sure why.

"The Democratic race is pretty much over, unfortunately, and Kerry looks like the best person we have right now to beat Bush," said Paulson, 27, as he waited for the Democratic front-runner to speak at a Brooklyn college auditorium last weekend. "Superficially, Kerry looks pretty good, but I don't know much about him."

From union workers in Ohio and antiwar activists in Georgia to African-American Democrats in California and young New Yorkers like Paulson, dozens of voters interviewed over the last week said they were just starting to search for reasons to like Kerry.

To a person, they said they expected Kerry to be their party's nominee this fall and are trying to make peace with their own nagging suspicions that a president Dean, Kucinich, or John Edwards would jibe more with their politics or personalities.

"I like Edwards, especially his stance on trade, but I keep hearing that the race is over and Kerry is the best person to get that evil man out of the White House," said Dina Levi, a high school counselor in Oakland, Calif., who was among 2,000 people standing in an enormous line at union hall Friday night to hear Kerry speak. "If I'm going to vote for Kerry, I'd like to feel good about it. I'm not quite there yet." In Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta yesterday, Kerry told voters he would offer a starkly different agenda from President Bush's in the fall, and gave a glancing rebuke to unnamed Democratic campaigns of the past that sought to co-opt Republican messages and blur the differences between parties.

"This is going to be a campaign different from campaigns in the past," Kerry told 600 students at Ohio State University. "This isn't going to be some kind of, you know, we're-like-them-they're-like-us-wishy-washy-mealy-mouth-you-can't-tell-the-difference deal. This is going to be something where we're giving America a real choice."

Kerry campaign aides expressed confidence that the nomination was within their grasp, saying both internal and public polls indicated the Massachusetts senator holding mostly double-digit leads in all 10 Super Tuesday states.

Kerry is already trying to unite the party behind him, taking political stands on issues like trade that appeal to disparate factions of the party, as he did with Ohio laborers when he defended workers' rights while saying "you can't love jobs but hate the people who create them."

That could spell trouble down the road, political analysts say, if he does not fire up bedrock Democratic constituencies or inspire more Americans to see him as a likable sort, in the way many now see Edwards and Bush.

"Kerry's not only the front-runner, he's also the fallback candidate for just about every Democrat who likes someone else," said Don Kettl, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, who closely followed that state's Feb. 17 primary where Kerry beat Edwards by a slimmer-than-expected margin. "A lot of people aren't ready for this race to be over. Democrats feel they don't have much time to decide whether to fight for someone other than Kerry."

Tom Kiley, one of Kerry's chief pollsters, said Democrats traditionally are "notorious" for wanting their primary seasons to last as long as possible so they have a say in the nominee -- particularly this year, since many voters began with relatively little knowledge about Kerry, Edwards, or the other candidates.

"Voters really want the circus to come to their town, to generate excitement and good feeling and talk about the candidates," Kiley said.

To be sure, Kerry has recorded decisive victories in 18 of 20 Democratic contests so far this winter, and many veterans, laborers, single parents, and others have intensely positive feelings about him. At an event on Friday at the University of California at Los Angeles, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, and several students in the audience described Kerry as the second coming of John F. Kennedy. Another voter at the Brooklyn event giddily raved that Kerry even bore a resemblance to JFK.

At a rally yesterday in Baltimore, virtually the entire Democratic political establishment of Maryland was on stage with Kerry. Many voters have praised him for being his own man -- for instance, speaking up for gun owners' rights and opposing the death penalty except in the case of terrorists, two positions that run against the grain of Democratic presidential candidates in recent years..

Many of these same voters acknowledged that it was an image of Kerry -- Kennedyesque, a war hero -- that attracted them, rather than a certainty that he was the best standard-bearer among all Democratic leaders in Washington or the state capitals.

"He looks and sounds very presidential, especially when he's talking about national security, and you're going to need that in a debate with George Bush," said John Valin, a graphic designer in Atlanta. Valin described himself as a former Dean supporter who wished the former Vermont governor had not dropped out of the race. "Now it's more about beating Bush for me. . . . I just want to make sure Kerry can win."

Among the intangibles on the minds of many Democrats is the crucial factor of their eventual nominee's personal style. During a question-and-answer period at the Brooklyn event Saturday night, one audience member told Kerry, "I appreciate how you've softened up" during the campaign, a reference to a perception that Kerry acts wooden and aloof.

Even so, some Democrats are just not fully reconciled with a Kerry nomination.

"I thought John Edwards was an excellent candidate, and he stood up to Bush on the money for the war in Iraq," said Sadhana Johnson, who attended Kerry's Oakland rally Friday and later said she was not aware that Kerry also voted against the president's $87 billion spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan last year. "I'm trying to get myself ready to vote for Kerry. I'm like most Democrats -- I want Bush out, out, out!"

Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.