Kerry campaign trail follows path of patriotism

NANTUCKET -- Underscoring the degree to which he will draw on Boston's history of patriotism at next week's Democratic convention, John F. Kerry will kick off a nationwide "freedom trail" tour this Friday at his birthplace in Aurora, Colo., that will take him across swing states such as Iowa, Ohio, and Florida and then into his hometown to accept the party's nomination on July 29.

The six-day rolling rally will touch down in several cities that have special meaning for the presumptive Democratic nominee, campaign officials and Kerry's daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, told reporters yesterday. Kerry's family, and vice presidential nominee John Edwards and his family, will come to Colorado on Friday and fan out eastward.

"They're going to blaze their own version of America's freedom trail to the convention," said Kerry's campaign chairwoman, Jeanne Shaheen, a former New Hampshire governor. Kerry has named his six-day "roll-in" to the convention after Boston's Freedom Trail, the 3-mile brick path that passes by monuments and scenes from the Revolutionary War.

After Aurora, Kerry will visit Sioux City, Iowa, where he has repeatedly evoked the "can-do spirit" of the Lewis and Clark expedition that passed through there 200 years ago; Columbus, Ohio, to recall the rise of the railroads and raise the need for new jobs; Cape Canaveral, Fla., to talk about ambitious goal-setting, citing President Kennedy's call for putting an American on the moon; to Norfolk, Va., to tout his military background; and Philadelphia, to talk about America's role in the world.

Kerry is expected to arrive in Boston next Wednesday night or Thursday, campaign advisers said yesterday. They declined to say whether the candidate would walk from his Beacon Hill home to the FleetCenter on Thursday evening to enjoy sidewalk cheers before accepting the nomination that night.

The unveiling of Kerry's convention plans had a wobbly start yesterday, notable chiefly because campaign officials want to replicate the smooth successful debut of the vice presidential nominee, John Edwards, early this month. After noting that Kerry wanted to kick off the tour at his Colorado birthplace -- "the beginning of his family and service career," Shaheen said -- no one on a conference call with reporters could say how long Kerry had lived there.

"This is going to be embarrassing," Alexandra Kerry said on the call, also disclosing that she had never visited her father's birthplace. She recalled that her grandfather had been in Colorado to recuperate from an illness. "Several months," campaign spokeswoman Allison Dobson said. (Kerry was four months old when the family left for Groton, Mass.)

Alexandra Kerry -- who, along with her sister, has proved popular with campaign audiences -- was asked to comment on the Democratic convention's effect on day-to-day life in Boston and on the image of the city.

"I think it is a positive celebration, and I think it's sad that [a negative image is] something that has been perpetuated in the press," she asserted, before adding that, "for a lot of people, in some ways, in pragmatic, practical terms, it is an inconvenience."

Also yesterday, former senator Max Cleland, who is working to elect Kerry, accused President Bush of feeding Congress and the American people "a pack of lies" as justification for the war in Iraq.

"We were flat out lied to," the Georgia Democrat said, "by the president, by the vice president, and by the secretary of defense."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com.