Kerry Visit to Boston Nets $4 million

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/04/14/kerry_visit_to_boston_nets_4m?mode=PF

Kerry visit to Boston nets $4m
Candidate the star at record fund-raiser
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 4/14/2004

Returning to the host city of the Democratic convention with his party's nomination under his belt, Senator John F. Kerry last night presided over the largest political fund-raiser in Massachusetts history and offered some red meat from his trail speech for a hometown audience.

"We're not just here tonight to raise money," Kerry told a crowd of 3,300 gathered in a ballroom at the Sheraton Boston Hotel, a group that collectively raised $4 million for Kerry's campaign and $1 million for the Democratic National Committee. "We're here to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush administration."

Joined on stage by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Kerry reveled in the cheers of an audience that included Democratic activists, members of the Massachusetts congressional and legislative delegations, as well as Cambridge native and actor Ben Affleck; Seth Meyers, the comedian who plays Kerry on TV's "Saturday Night Live;" and Sam Poulton of Chelmsford, an Army reservist and longtime Democrat who just returned from 13 months in Iraq.

The senator also blasted away at conservative Republicans who have branded him a liberal figure, declaring: "There is nothing conservative, whatsoever, about this administration, which has taken surpluses as far as the eye can see and turned then into deficits as far as the eye can see. There's nothing conservative about blatantly violating that beautiful line drawn by our Founding Fathers that separates church and state in the United States of America. There is nothing conservative about an attorney general who disrespects the Constitution and steps on the civil rights and civil liberties of Americans. And there is nothing conservative about a president of the United States who toys with the greatest document in political history, the Constitution of the United States, during an election year for political purposes to drive a wedge between the American people.

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