Word: welds
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...Weld may look and sound more like a coffee-shop regular, but his pedigree is more aristocratic than Kerry's. Both candidates hail from old money--one of Weld's ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, and Kerry descends on his mother's side from New England shipping magnates. Both graduated from prep school into Ivy League colleges. But while Weld moved on to Oxford and Harvard Law, Kerry went to Vietnam and returned with a chestful of medals and enough firsthand disillusionment to lead 5,500 vets in a 1971 antiwar march. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...Kerry can sometimes sound like a scold, Weld always seems on the verge of poking fun. When he moved into the statehouse, Weld replaced Dukakis' portrait of Revolutionary hero Samuel Adams with one of James Michael Curley, the notoriously corrupt Boston mayor who once campaigned from prison. This summer the Governor pulled what an aide called a "pure Weld" when, after the signing of an environmental bill, he leaped fully clothed into the Charles River...
...affability helps sugarcoat fiercely conservative fiscal policies that might otherwise be a tough sell in a state where only 13% of the voters are registered Republicans. Weld cut benefits to the poor, hiked tuition rates at state universities and passed an austere welfare-reform plan a year before Congress caught up. All but two of his tax cuts have benefited businesses rather than individuals, and his decision to accept money from political-action committees looks all the worse since Kerry turns down those contributions. It doesn't hurt that Weld courts confrontation with the national Republican Party...
...Weld's version of triangulation--positioning himself between both parties--does not always succeed. He caused a fury in late 1994 when he rewarded Democratic legislators backing his capital-gains tax cut with a big salary hike. His reliance on old-style patronage was evident in June 1995, when he threw his support behind an anachronistic state mandate that only off-duty police officers be hired to oversee roadwork...
...Weld has trouble fighting the perception that he wants to go to Washington because he's bored on Beacon Hill. "Right now, the fights that matter most...are in another arena--Congress," he said when he announced in November 1995. He was still happy then to declare himself Newt Gingrich's "ideological soul mate," a statement Kerry highlights every chance he gets. Weld counters by trying to tag Kerry as a liberal, as if that were a deadly liability in a state whose other Senator is Ted Kennedy. The Governor has hit his opponent hard for voting to protect disability...