Teresa Heinz Kerry: Hiding Something?

The Trentonian
Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Dave Nesse, Editorial Page Editor


The naming of a runningmate hardly takes all the suspense out of Sen. John Kerry’s candidacy. Another important matter still looms involving the vast wealth of the candidate’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. No, the issue in not her possession of such wealth, per se. The possession of wealth seems to be a troubling issue only among denizens of the political left and then seemingly only when the wealth in question is possessed by a Republican.

Is whether Teresa Heinz Kerry going to come fully clean on her finances or opt, as she has so far, for a modified limited hangout, to use the old Nixonian Watergate term for curbing disclosure. So far, she’s opted for the latter.

She released a summary stating her 2003 income at a tad over $5 million, which sounds low measured against her assets – for example, a $35 million Gulfstream V jet, a $14 million spread outside Pittsburgh, a $12 million place on Nantucket, etc, etc. not to mention her hubby’s 750,000 to $1 million yacht and $8,000 mountain bike. But she has not released income tax returns. If she persists in her refusal to do so, Kerry will be the first presidential candidate in three decades not to make full financial disclosure including his spouse’s income tax returns.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited her wealth from her late husband Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz is clearly a philanthropist of magnanimous magnitude, funding myriad noble causes through various foundations. But some of the Heinz wealth also has found its way indirectly to political activist causes. Her wealth played a more direct political role in shoring up her husband’s precarious primary campaign finances with a well-timed, desperately needed loan. The political reach of her wealth is one reason for full disclosure.

Another, more compelling reason is the economic reach of her assets. The Heinz trust makes hundreds of thousands of transactions a year in stocks and bonds. Her wealth is a significant market force all by itself. This is true even assuming, as we do, that influence of the Heinz wealth is free of any taint of malevolence or impropriety.

The full disclosure issue has become all the more urgent with the Los Angeles Times estimate of her wealth as far greater previously reckoned - $900 million to $3 billion. Even the lesser of those numbers dwarfs the net worth of George W. and Laura Bush ($13 million) who are often portrayed by many of those now rallying to the Kerry banner as part of a shadow government of sinister plutocrats.

Heinz-Kerry and her candidate husband are assuming the political personas of would-be tribunes of ordinary working Americans. The Kerry campaign has retained as its hired-gun media consultant Robert Shrum, an exponent of populist themes. Yet another reason for full financial disclosure.

Of course, in the end, there is no legal requirement that Heinz Kerry disclose her income tax returns. She would be fully within her rights to persist in telling Americans, in effect, “My wealth is none of your business!” In which event Americans will be perfectly justified in wondering what she and her candidate husband are hiding.