Kerry focuses on financial plight of workers

LAS VEGAS -- Senator John F. Kerry left Massachusetts yesterday on the eve of historic gay-marriage ceremonies there, flying to Las Vegas to deliver a speech to the Teamsters union and then heading to Kansas for a major speech today on the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education civil rights ruling.

In the most recent draft of the Kansas speech, Kerry is not planning to mention sexual orientation in the broader context of fighting bias in America, aides said, preferring to focus on the legacy of the Brown ruling and the need for stronger public schools. The permission for gays in Massachusetts to marry starting today has emerged as the major political issue in Kerry's home state, but he has taken a relatively low profile on the divisive issue.

Campaign spokesman David Wade said yesterday that Kerry was not expected to mark the the occasion in any formal way today. ''Our message Monday is Brown v. Board of Education, which is a very serious matter to Senator Kerry," Wade said.

Before about 1,000 Teamsters at Bally's Las Vegas Hotel, the presumed Democratic nominee championed his economic agenda -- ''a real plan, not rhetoric, not warmed-over talk from the last campaign." Kerry used the refrain ''Today in America" to describe the financial plights of voters and union workers in the 2004 battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Nevada, and he put their difficulties and sacrifices in a patriotic context.

''They deserve a president whose first fight is not for the privileged, not for those who have the money to hire the lobbyists, not for the strongest people in America, not for the wealthiest people in our country -- but [for] people who reflect the truth of our communities, who reflect what we know from our firefighters and our police officers and our rescue workers who were part of Sept. 11 in ways that none of us could dream," Kerry said. Kerry made clear to the Teamsters that he supports free trade, a controversial issue among many union supporters but one that has not splintered their fairly united front to defeat Bush this year.

Kerry, who voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, said he would enforce trade-pact rules more aggressively than has Bush, with an eye toward ensuring a ''level playing field" for US workers. He also promised to renegotiate the Central American Free Trade Agreement to ensure labor protections for US workers.

''When I'm president, we will never turn a blind eye to clear trade violations when American jobs are on the line -- we're going to stand up and fight for them," Kerry said. ''And when we enter an agreement, those countries will know that they must live up to their part of the bargain."

The Teamsters president, James Hoffa, told reporters afterward, ''He's OK on trade, he's going to be fine on trade, he understands the issue. . . . It is seared into his conscience that we have to change the way we do business.

''I think he has a record of voting for NAFTA; he has a record of voting for a number of things -- and I know that's his record, and in the future he will have a different record, and that is because of the campaign, because of the commitments, and because he feels what's going on in the country."

Hoffa disclosed that he had been asked by Kerry, if the Democrat wins, to serve on a committee of economists, labor representatives, and others who would review all US trade agreements in the first 120 days of the new administration to ensure that the pacts were enforced and not unfairly harming US workers.

On labor's views about the Democratic ticket this year, Hoffa said he had urged Kerry ''three or four times" to name Representative Richard A. Gephardt as his running mate, a Missouri congressman with strong ties to unions.

The running mate should be someone who can carry a swing state like Missouri, said Hoffa, who has a solid following among voters on his own.

According to Hoffa, Kerry replied to the Gephardt suggestion: ''I'll take it into consideration. He's a fine man."

Among vice presidential candidates attending the meeting of teamsters or a Kerry fund-raiser yesterday were Gephardt, Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Campaign aides said Kerry had not met privately with any of them, nor did campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill or strategist Michael Whouley, who accompanied him here.

In his speech, Kerry praised Gephardt several times and championed labor priorities the two men share, such as ensuring overtime pay for US workers.

He also held a fund-raiser in Las Vegas that netted $300,000 for Kerry and $200,000 for the Democratic National Committee.

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