WASHINGTON, June 16 - Senator John Kerry met with Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri for close to 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon as the senator's search for a vice-presidential running mate entered a more intensive phase of face-to-face interviews.þþWhile informed Democratic officials confirmed the subject of the meeting, Mr. Kerry declined to discuss it. ÿI've told you that I'm keeping that a private process,ÿ he said.þþAfterward, asked how the meeting had gone, he warned reporters, ÿI wouldn't report anything you haven't confirmed.ÿ þþIn a previously scheduled interview earlier in the day, before the meeting became known, Mr. Gephardt said: ÿIf John Kerry wants me to do something, including vice president, I will do it. But I'm very happy to do something else.''þþDespite feints and ruses, Mr. Kerry's decision to return from campaigning in Ohio for unspecified office work in his Capitol hideaway left the Capitol police and the Senate sergeant-at-arms struggling to keep reporters at bay. þþIt was no surprise that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gephardt were talking: they have been colleagues in Congress for decades and escaped the Democratic primaries without developing any obvious enmity between them. Mr. Gephardt, a former House minority leader whose hometown, St. Louis, lies in a pivotal county in a battleground state, also brings broad experience in domestic and foreign policy that Mr. Kerry's advisers say he is looking for in a running mate.þþYet there are strategic political reasons, too, for Mr. Kerry to show that he is giving Mr. Gephardt serious consideration. For one, the congressman is by far the favored candidate of the labor movement, an important Democratic constituency whose leaders have had their differences with Mr. Kerry over trade and other issues but have suggested that all would be forgiven in November with Mr. Gephardt on the ticket.þþOthers who Democrats say are being considered for the running mate's job and whose travel schedules made it possible, at least, for them to meet in Washington with Mr. Kerry this week included Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, and Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, both of Florida.þþGovernor Vilsack, who appeared in Washington at a news conference for Families USA, a group that issued a report highlighting the number of people without health insurance, would not disclose whether he was meeting with Mr. Kerry, saying only, ÿYou need to ask Senator Kerry about his schedule.'' But a Vilsack aide said late Wednesday that the governor was not seeing the senator.þþSenator John McCain, meanwhile, the Arizona Republican who has turned down several entreaties by Mr. Kerry to consider being his running mate on a bipartisan ticket, said again on the NBC News television program ÿTodayÿ that he was not interested in the job.þþÿI promise you,'' Mr. McCain said, ÿI will not be vice president of the United States.''þþAnd former Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, whose name has surfaced as Mr. Kerry considers Democrats deemed strong on defense and international relations, issued a statement saying that he had no intention of returning to government or campaigning and that ÿI've had no conversation with Senator Kerry about any position in government.ÿþþAny delay in picking a running mate has done Mr. Kerry no harm; Democrats interested in the job have crisscrossed the country raising money and speaking for him. The Kerry campaign announced Wednesday that it had raised $100 million since early March, including $44 million on the Internet. þþBut amid reports of Mr. McCain's repeated rejection of Mr. Kerry's offers, and with just six weeks left before the Democratic National Convention, the pace of Mr. Kerry's hunt for a vice-presidential nominee has apparently quickened in the last week. Jim Johnson, the head of his vice-presidential search, and Mary Beth Cahill, his campaign manager, were seen leaving his townhouse in Georgetown on Wednesday night. Aides now say a decision could come by the Fourth of July holiday. þþCapitol Hill, with its hordes of reporters, was hardly the out-of-the-way location for a private sit-down that Mr. Kerry's secret vetting process would have seemed to require.þþMr. Kerry himself took part in trying to throw reporters off the trail. Arriving with aides and bodyguards at his cubbyhole office about 3:40 p.m., he announced, ÿI'm just going to be here a couple of minutes,ÿ then asked his entourage if anyone had a key to the hideaway.þþAs he went inside, a security escort, making vague references to an ÿimminent departureÿ by Mr. Kerry, ejected reporters from the hallway and shut a door leading up to it, and the Capitol police pushed them beyond even an adjoining stairway and corridor.þþBut Mr. Gephardt was spotted at 3:56 p.m. as he walked from the Capitol Rotunda through a back corridor and into a small elevator leading directly to Mr. Kerry's unmarked office on the third floor.þþMr. Gephardt was not seen departing, but he managed to slip away to cast a vote on the House floor about 5:45.þþMr. Kerry left his hideaway- a prerogative for senators, who also have full office suites in other buildings on Capitol Hill - about 6:15 and headed to his Georgetown home.þþEarlier in the day, in Columbus, Ohio, the senator unveiled a proposal to expand child care assistance through broader tax credits and after-school programs.þþÿThis is the most important work in the United States of America, right here,'' he told a group of parents and supporters at an after-school center.þþReturning to his main line of attack this week, Mr. Kerry asserted that the Bush administration had shortchanged working parents and their children.þþÿI don't get it,ÿ he said. ÿThe wealthiest people in America are getting a huge, walk-away-with-the-store tax cut, but a whole bunch of kids who need to have after-school adult input aren't getting it.ÿþþThe Kerry campaign said its plan would expand the tax credit for child care to cover up to $5,000 of expenses a child; it currently covers the first $3,000. For a couple earning $60,000 with two children, that would mean an additional tax cut of $800, campaign officials said.þþMr. Kerry would also extend the tax benefit to lower-income working families who are not now eligible because they do not owe any taxes. And, officials said, he would use it to support stay-at-home mothers of infants. þ
Source: NY Times
