Does Teresa Heinz Trust John Kerry? If not, why should we?

If Teresa Heinz won't trust presidential candidate John Kerry with her money, why should American voters trust Kerry with their country?

Teresa Heinz and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., were married in 1995. Kerry's assets at the time were a few million dollars. (Click here for Kerry's Senate financial disclosure form for 1995.) Heinz's assets at the time were reportedly around half a billion dollars, which she'd inherited from her late husband, Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., heir to the ketchup fortune. Unlike many other married couples, Heinz and Kerry kept their premarital assets separate. Much of Teresa Heinz's inheritance was no doubt tied up in trusts, but a substantial sum must have been unencumbered, because she had Sen. Kerry sign a prenuptial agreement. "Everybody has a prenup," Heinz explained to Lisa DiPaulo, who profiled her sympathetically in Elle.

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By all accounts, Teresa Heinz had no interest in becoming first lady during her 25-year marriage to John Heinz (who died in a 1991 plane crash). "Over my dead body," she told John. Apparently she spent the first seven years of her marriage to John Kerry telling him the same thing. According to a Nov. 30 profile by Maeve Reston in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It was only last year that she says she changed her mind and told Kerry she would support his decision to run."

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Heinz Kerry must have had some inkling that the day might come when her second husband would need her money. And knowing that, she didn't make it available. That doesn't make her a bad wife. But it does raise a disconcerting question for voters. If Teresa Heinz Kerry won't give John Kerry the keys to the car, why should we?


http://slate.msn.com/id/2091886/

dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=95179