The Campaigning Clan

By Michele Orecklin

As they campaign across the country in shifting combinations of twos and threes, the daughters of John Kerry and sons of Teresa Heinz seem to enjoy an effortless camaraderie. One person's arm inevitably drapes over another's shoulder, and they appear to amuse one another endlessly with whispered asides. But because creating an aura of warmth is one of the reasons a candidate's family goes on the stump, many have wondered whether this group has really formed the perfect blended family it advertises itself as.

Brought together when their parents married in 1995, the kids have by now grown tired of references to the Brady Bunch. "It doesn't get at the fact that we're a very real family," says Vanessa Kerry, 27, a medical student at Harvard. While she concedes that initially they had to work to find common ground, today they "fight to find time to spend together." A key factor in such harmony, she says, is that each family respects the other's "legacy." For the Heinz men, that means their deceased father John; for Vanessa and sister Alexandra, 30, it's their mother Julia, who grew tired of being a politician's wife and divorced their father in 1988.

Vanessa, a Yale grad, seems more at ease in front of a crowd than Alexandra, a Brown alum who this spring earned a degree from the American Film Institute. (A movie she wrote and directed was shown in May at the Cannes Film Festival.) But neither is quite as natural as Chris Heinz, 31, whose good looks and smooth confidence have left pundits divided over whether he should get a political platform or a screen test. He says he's inclined toward the former.

Chris stumps enthusiastically for his stepfather; his brothers, less so. Andre, 34, while a familiar presence in the past few weeks (getting frequent requests for his impressions of Bill Clinton, among others), lives primarily in Stockholm and consults for an environmental group. Then there is John IV, 37, who declines all interviews and public appearances. Married with a daughter, he teaches at a Pennsylvania school and is involved in the Heinz Family Foundation. Vanessa insists that John is not a recluse, as he is invariably described. "He's a wonderful person who keeps his life as private as possible," she says. Acting as one, the rest of the family chooses to respect that. --By Michele Orecklin