Patti Davis' Kerry Connection

This weekend's announcement by Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis that she intended to take on the Bush administration over the issue of stem cell research isn't the first time she's found herself on the same page with Sen. John Kerry.

In a move that most viewed as coincidental, Kerry just happened to decide to devote his Saturday radio address to the stem cell issue at the same time Patti was penning her Newsweek piece on the issue.

But lo and behold, it turns out that Ms. Davis and Mr. Kerry aren't exactly strangers to one another.

Back in 1989, for instance, Davis turned to ex-Kerry staffer Eric Hamburg for help with her second novel, "Deadfall," about the U.S.'s involvement in Nicaragua. Patti was still in her rebellious phase and Kerry was an outspoken critic of her father's decision to fight the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime.

Around the same time, Davis approached Sen. Kerry directly for help with her Save-the-Dolphin campaign. The Massachusetts Democrat was then a member of Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and vice chairman of the National Ocean Policy Study.

She invited Kerry to see film footage taken by fellow environmentalist Sam LaBudde of dolphins being killed by tuna fishermen.

Before long, her visits to Kerry's office - the senator was a bachelor at the time - sparked reports that the two were an item, something that Davis denied.

"Patti wants her denial on the record," reported the Washington Times in 1990.

"She says there's definitely no romantic interest between the two. Nothin' but dolphins. As a matter of fact, they've only been to lunch together once - several months ago in an L.A. restaurant. Born-on-the-Fourth-of-Julyster Ron Kovic was also along on that lunch date."

"People can't figure out what I'm doing in my private life. I drive them crazy," Davis explained.

Still, as recently as two years ago - the same month Kerry announced for president, as happenstance would have it - Davis was talking about Kerry's influence on her life in, of all places, National Review.

Explaining how the Sept. 11 attacks had changed her outlook, the anti-Bush Reagan daughter noted:

"In the weeks that followed [the attacks], I wept almost every time I saw a flag or heard the verses of 'America the Beautiful.' Yet behind my tears was the memory of a young girl who, decades ago, used to talk about leaving America, who was angry at the war in a jungle country called Vietnam where fresh-faced boys were being sent to slaughter and be slaughtered. 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam?' John Kerry asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?'"

Of course, now that the issue of stem cell research has given Democrats a way to use President Reagan's death to bash Bush, mum's the word in the media about previous Kerry-Davis alliances.

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