Growing coffers embolden Kerry

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- John F. Kerry has become increasingly outspoken and confident as his once virtually broke campaign benefits from a flood of donations and he moves closer to naming a running mate.

The presumptive Democratic nominee is about to finish a three-month fund-raising sweep that has raised more than $100 million for his campaign. His vice-presidential search is winding down, with him interviewing the top prospects and his staff planning an elaborate rollout next month. And Kerry has overseen a redrafting of his stump speech, which includes lofty talk about morals and ideals and a recitation of poet Langston Hughes's admonition to ''let America be America again."

Last night, Kerry was scheduled to arrive in Nantucket for a weekend break, but bad weather delayed him. Nonetheless, the pace continues next week as, on Monday alone, he flies to Denver and Aspen, Colo., for fund-raisers, before flying on to Albuquerque.

Aides noted that the evolution of the Kerry campaign came after a three-year process that saw the junior senator from Massachusetts traveling the country on commercial planes to line up donors and make key contacts in Iowa and New Hampshire, fighting a tough primary campaign, then building a general election team.

Now he flies in a Boeing 757 emblazoned with his name, the Secret Service eases his movement through crowds and traffic lights, and hundreds of staff and volunteers across the country are focused on his schedule, his speechmaking, and policy. Gone is much of the frenzy that was a trademark of his prior campaigns.

''The president's campaign has been sitting back for a year and a half, just waiting for whoever is going to emerge from the nomination process," Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager, said yesterday during an interview at the campaign's Washington headquarters.

''We, as you know, had to hire up a staff, had to hire our state directors, had to broaden our media teams and polling teams and all that kind of stuff, and we've done that," Cahill said. ''I think that we see the results of that in that the campaign is bigger and sharper, it's better, and we've been able to attract some of the real outstanding talent of the Democratic Party," Cahill added.

More particularly, Kerry has begun to drop the caution that had enveloped his campaign this spring, abandoning his strict commitment to his campaign's message of the day and twice approaching reporters this week to say simply, ''I'd be happy to answer your questions."

He also engaged President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over a report questioning the ties between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accusing them of misleading him and the nation. And he rejected any suggestion that months of improving job numbers, the handover of power in Iraq to an interim government, and the administration's attempts to internationalize the country's rebuilding, could undercut the rationale for his election on Nov. 2.

''What will not go away as an issue, no matter how many jobs we create in the next four months, is the reality of day-to-day life for most Americans, who are having trouble paying their health-care bills, paying the gasoline bills, paying their tuitions, all of which have gone up while wages have gone down," Kerry said Thursday in Detroit. ''What will not go away is the reversal of the environmental policies of our country. What will not go away is the absence of any plan for health care for Americans."

Stuart Rothenberg, an independent political analyst in Washington, attributes Kerry's evolution in part to the calendar and the approaching general election, but also to an outgrowth of recent news. After a spike in casualties in Iraq and the initial hearings of the Sept. 11 investigative commission made late April and early May bleak for the Bush administration, gas prices have dipped in recent weeks and economists predict continued job growth, allowing the president to boast that his tax-cut policy is working.

''There may be a sense that Bush has an opportunity to turn things around a little bit and that it might be the time to take the attack to Bush," said Rothenberg.

Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.