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Sheehy, who supports Kerry for President, has not forgotten Kerry's tone deafness back then. Sitting in his backyard in Lowell, he describes the perception of the young candidate. "He was not well received by anyone, being an outsider, telling people you don't have anyone smart enough to represent you here, bringing in [campaign] people who couldn't even vote here."
Kerry failed to win Lowell's support in the primary but made it to the general election anyway because of a surprisingly strong showing in neighboring affluent towns like Concord. "They ran a masterful campaign. He had an ability to fund raise. He was good at organizing," Sheehy admits. But during and after the fiercely competitive primary battle, Kerry ignored a basic rule of politics: he failed to reach out to the other candidates. "He was not good at developing relationships. He needed to do that to show him as a human being, not an ogre," Sheehy says. "He should have said, 'Listen, I'll support you if you win this primary, and I'd like you to do the same.'" Meanwhile, the Lowell Sun viciously attacked Kerry for his antiwar stance, and the carpetbagger-hippie label stuck. Senator Ted Kennedy campaigned for Kerry for the first of many times, but Kerry lost the general election to a Republican. And his reputation as a "blow in" was thus entrenched in political lore. A year later, someone threw a rock in the window of his Lowell home. By 1976 he had moved to the more upscale Newton, abandoning politics until 1982.
These days, at the Acre Pub in Lowell, where a beer costs $1.50 and a dog named Lulu lives in a bed next to the video-game machines, nobody remembers that Kerry once bought the house a round of beer during his 1972 campaign. In fact, nobody at the bar can even imagine Kerry being here. It doesn't fit the narrative. "A guy that's married a gazillion dollars cannot possibly understand what the workingman wants," says Paula Reynolds, 62, a retired electronics-plant worker, referring to Kerry's second wife Teresa. Never mind that the state's other Senator has his own millions. Says Dave Brunelle, 47, a sheet-metal worker: "The Kennedy family has done so much for Massachusetts. As far as I'm concerned, there's very little they can do wrong."
Kerry has had 32 years to build a better story line for himself in Massachusetts. As Senator, he helped win federal money for low-income housing and for preserving Lowell's industrial-age history. He came back to visit even when there were no cameras around. But he has yet to find an identity that resonates. Says Sullivan: "You ask people, 'What is Ted Kennedy's most important issue?' It's health care. You can talk about John McCain, and people know [his issue] is government waste. The core essence of John Kerry seems to be political ambition. It's 'Wait until he gets there. When he gets to the White House, he'll be President!'"
At the Acre Pub, when I ask Reynolds what she remembers about Kerry's legacy, she offers only this doozy: "He burned the American flag in front of the post office here at the end of the war." Kerry has unequivocally denied that he ever burned a flag anywhere. In a story earlier this year, the Sun reported it could not find any proof the incident ever happened. Yet the rumor has thrived in Lowell for 30 years.