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Presidential contenders factfile
26/10/2004 10:25 - (SA)
President George Bush
Bush was born on July 6 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut but the family soon moved to Texas which he now considers his home.
He is only the second son of a US president to become president. The first was John Quincy Adams, who served as president from 1825 to 1829. He was the son of John Adams, who served as the second US president from 1797-1801.
Bush attended a top private school in Connecticut, Yale University, where he was a member of the elite Skull and Bones secret society, and received a Master's in Business Administration degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
During the Vietnam War, Bush joined the Air National Guard in Texas. He has faced accusations that his family used its influence to enable him to avoid going to Vietnam.
Bush was arrested at age 30 for drunken driving but 10 years later, after a hard-partying 40th birthday, chose to quit drinking. He is now a born-again Methodist.
In 1975, Bush moved back to Texas to seek his fortune in the oil industry and make his first run for elected office. He eventually led a group of investors to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989.
Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and in 1998 became the first person to win re-election to the post.
Bush won the White House in 2000 even though the Democrats' Al Gore won the popular vote. A recount in Florida was halted by the Supreme Court with Bush ahead by 537 votes, giving him the required votes in the Electoral College that decides the presidency.
The September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington transformed Bush's presidency and he led the United States into two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are now at the heart of his campaign for re-election. He also forced 1.65-trillion-dollar tax cuts through Congress.
Bush met and married Laura Welch in 1977. They have twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. When not occupied by affairs of state and family matters, Bush looks after his Texas ranch. A one-time fitness fanatic his main sport now is mountain bikes.
John Kerry
Born December 11 1943 in a military hospital in Denver, Colorado. His mother Rosemary Winthrop was a member of the Forbes family, one of the wealthiest in the United States.
Kerry was educated at private schools in Switzerland and New England paid for by a wealthy aunt. He went to Yale University two years ahead of George Bush. Both were in the secretive Skull and Bones club at the Connecticut university.
The Massachussets senator enjoys snowboarding, windsurfing, motorbikes and in his earlier years flying. In the 1960s, he started an attempt to fly under the Golden Gate Bridge but pulled up before reaching the San Francisco landmark.
Kerry volunteered to fight in the Vietnam war after graduating with a law degree in 1966. He was awarded three Purple Hearts for wounds suffered and a Bronze Star and Silver Star for valour.
On his return from Vietnam, Kerry joined the anti-war campaign and appeared before a Senate committee to make the now famous challenge: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
After a struggle to find a Congress seat, Kerry finally entered the Senate in 1985 and was soon deeply involved in investigations into the Iran Contra arms scandal and drug trafficking accusations against Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Kerry married a first time to Julia Thorne, the twin sister of his then best friend, in 1972. The couple have two daughters, Alexandra and Vanessa, but they split in 1982 and divorced four years later.
He married for a second time in 1995 to Teresa Heinz, widow of Republican senator H John Heinz III, the head of the ketchup empire. His wife inherited a fortune and runs a fund worth more than one billion dollars.
Kerry's campaigns have not always been successful. In 1996 he had to inject $1.6m of his own money to ward off a strong Republican challenge to his Senate seat.
In 2003 Kerry mortgaged his half share in the family home in Boston to raise more than six million dollars for his then-flagging bid to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
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