Campaign Diaries: The Front-Runner's Daughter
Vanessa Kerry on Her Dad's Not-So-Presidential Side
Vanessa Kerry at a campaign event in California.
About Campaign Diaries
Throughout the 2004 election season, NPR will present an intimate first-person look at the campaign.
In a series called Campaign Diaries, we'll hear accounts from passionate volunteers, from professional campaign workers, typical voters and election bystanders, people who organize campaign events or drive voters to the polls.
Sen. John Kerry is currently campaigning in California ahead of next week's Super Tuesday primary. The front-runner's campaign is flush with fresh endorsements and an army of volunteers. One of them has known the senator for her entire life -- Kerry's youngest daughter, Vanessa.
The third-year medical student sat out her father's previous political campaigns for the Senate. "My first one I was seven," she says, "I think I fell asleep in the bathtub on election night."
But for his presidential bid, she decided it was time to get involved: "My father and I used to have family dinners every Sunday, and we sat down together for dinner and I just said, 'Dad, you know, I want to join your campaign.' His fork dropped, it was pretty funny."
As part of NPR's Campaign Diary series, Vanessa Kerry talks about a slightly less suave -- but endearing -- side of her dad.
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