John Kerry

At first glance, it wouldn't seem that Reynaldo Palaso's fortunes would be tied up with the U.S. presidential election. But the father of two, who zips his dune buggy through the sugar-fine sand of Cuba's biggest resort enclave to deliver sodas and snacks to sun-worshiping foreign tourists, says he is avidly following the latest polls and candidate statements. He is watching for indications that the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, is pulling ahead.

John Kerry enlisted in the Navy four months before graduating from Yale University in 1966. With U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalating rapidly, joining voluntarily offered more attractive options to a young college graduate than did waiting to be drafted. After completing officer candidate school, 23-year-old Ensign Kerry was assigned to the guided-missile frigate U.S.S. Gridley, based in Long Beach.

Irving and Beatrice Zeiger, proudly liberal 86-year-olds who support Sen. John F. Kerry for president, would give anything to vote in the battleground state of Ohio. But stuck here in non-swing California, they're doing their best to sway voters in Irving's hometown of Cleveland. A month ago, they began writing to everyone in Cleveland whose last name begins with Z. It may be a tenuous connection, but Irving Zeiger figured that Z-people are part of a special club.

Sen. Barbara Boxer got her start in politics protesting the Vietnam War. But when it comes to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, she sounds like an unabashed hawk. "It cannot stand," the California Democrat declared. Rep. Jerrold Nadler is another veteran of the antiwar movement. But the New York Democrat hasn't the slightest hesitation about a war on terrorism. "When someone attacks you," he said, "you've got to respond."

There isn't a reality show yet called "Trading Faces," but you kind of wish John F. Kerry and John Edwards could swap. Edwards has an easy, open face to Kerry's darker, Lincolnesque one. Kerry's face could tell us more than we know about him, but it doesn't. Put him in one of those automated photo booths and you'd probably get back a dozen pictures of the very same man and the very same moment. Here in L.A., people aspire to the expressionless face. They pay lots of money for it, in fact.

He fought Ronald Reagan over Nicaragua and missile defense programs. He fought for more cops on the street, cleaner air and protecting the Alaska wilderness. To hear John F. Kerry tell it as he runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, he has been in the vanguard of dozens of legislative and policy battles during his almost 20 years as a senator from Massachusetts.

Gerald Nicosia is the author of "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement" (Crown Publishers, 2001, forthcoming in a new edition from Carroll & Graf this August). His research for the book included a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI in 1988 for records of the agency's surveillance of an antiwar group, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. On June 21, 1989, Sen.

It was once a late-night comedy riff, comparing a pair of Latin he-men. "¿Quien es mas macho, Fernando Lamas o Ricardo Montalban?" The gag on the preening masculinity of two aging stars had its day, then faded away. But an increasingly ornery presidential election season might resurrect the question. To wit: "¿Quien es mas macho, George Bush o John Kerry?" If it's not Kerry tossing a football across an airport tarmac, it's President Bush stomping around his Texas ranch in denim and cowboy boots.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, through a network of investments in blue-chip corporations, venture capital funds and municipal bonds, controls a family fortune worth an estimated $1 billion, an examination of public records shows. The $1-billion figure is double the estimates of her wealth that are widely cited in news stories about her husband, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Early one evening in the fall of 1984, John F. Kerry was flying home from a campaign stop in western Massachusetts when his helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing. An engine light signaled trouble, so the pilot touched down in an open field in Framingham just as Jerome Anderson was driving past. Anderson, a doctor, threw his yellow Volkswagen in reverse, backed up and called out, making sure none of the four passengers aboard the chopper was hurt.