Questions about whether candidates and their spouses are illegally paying domestic help off the books have bedeviled the political campaigns of the rich and famous since 1993, when Clinton attorney general nominee Zoe Baird crashed and burned after her Nannygate predicament was revealed.

Her replacement, Kimba Wood, had the same problem and had to withdraw.

In California's 1994 Senate race, both Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican Michael Huffington admitted hiring illegal aliens, canceling the problem out.

More recently, however, similar charges dogged EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. Last year, when Arnold Schwarzenegger released his tax returns after announcing his gubernatorial bid, Nannygate problems were among the first things reporters looked for. There were none.

Even largely baseless Nannygate accusations were enough to derail the nomination of the eminently qualified Linda Chavez to become secretary of labor.

But with less than two weeks to go in this year's presidential campaign, the question hasn't even come up for the woman who has undoubtedly hired more nannies than any other political spouse in the history of American politics.

That's due, at least in part, to the fact that Teresa Heinz continues to guard her tax returns more closely than the nation's nuclear secrets.

Some say, however, that even the small bit of information revealed in the Kerry campaign's two-page tax document dump last Friday show telltale signs that the Heinz Kerrys do indeed have a Nannygate problem.

The Internet blog site "Desert Rat Ramblings" noted, for instance:

"Lines 55 and 59 on [Teresa's] Form 1040 are Social Security and Medicare taxes paid to Household employees, ie: nannies; housekeepers; gardeners; etc. ... What Heinz-Kerry is claiming on her tax return for Household 'wages' extrapolates to approximately $7,500 - $8,000/year.

"$8,000 a year paid to household staff from a billionaire?"

Aside from Social Security taxes, questions about whether the would-be first couple obtained the proper I-9 immigration forms from their employees, and maintained proper W-2 records, have also gone unanswered.

Only a press corps that was actively working for a Kerry win would have let these questions fester till the last two weeks of the campaign.

Absent more thorough media scrutiny - or the Kerry campaign's decision to be more forthcoming about Teresa's finances - the American public would be right to conclude that something is being covered-up.

Editor's note: