Kerry clinging to lucky charms

2004-11-02 19:57

Boston - John Kerry will have lunch on Tuesday at one of former president John F Kennedy's favourite restaurants. The superstitious Democratic presidential candidate, who is clinging to his lucky charms, is hoping fate finds him a new home in the White House.

After voting, the Massachusetts senator was due to head, as he does every election day, to the fabled Union Oyster House which calls itself the oldest in the United States.

The quaint old spot was a favourite of another local, Kennedy, who had a regular table; John Forbes Kerry is hoping to follow in the other JFK's dining and presidential footsteps.

Early on Tuesday the restaurant crew was still working out whether Kerry would sit at what used to be Kennedy's table. The significance would not be lost on Kerry who, in the waning days of the tight presidential race, put increasingly heavy significance on symbolism.

For days, he has not taken off his mustard-yellow barn (hunting) jacket, which he bought during a winning streak in last autumn's Democratic primaries, and he donned the same red tie in his televised debates against President George W Bush, in which Kerry fared quite well.

The historic World Series win by baseball's Boston Red Sox also has given him reason to believe in long-shot luck.

Since then he has made one of his speechwriters, a fan of the rival New York Yankees, wear a Sox hat.

Just on Saturday Kerry said at a Wisconsin rally that he was optimistic about the presidential vote because of the solid showing by the local football team the Badgers.

Navajo lucky charm

To top it all off Sunday's loss by the Washington's US football team, the Redskins, has helped fuel Kerry's enthusiasm; since 1936, 17 presidential votes, the Redskins' last home game before the election is said to decide the fate of the incumbent.

And that is not the full extent of Kerry's superstition: he keeps his dog tags from Vietnam at close hand.

He also carries a charm given him by an indigenous Navajo leader during a visit to New Mexico; as well as a chestnut from a buckeye, state tree of Ohio, a key swing state.

"When a Native American chieftain hands me something and says if you carry this you're gonna be elected ... Man, I carry that. I'm not taking any chances," Kerry told Knight Ridder newspapers.

Of the prized chestnut, Kerry said: "It will be with me right on the Oval desk.

"It'll sit there, a little glass cover on it, to preserve it - for good luck for the country."

- AFP