Biography Of Teresa Heinz Kerry

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IF A PRESIDENT CAN'T BE A FOREIGNER THEN WHY SHOULD HIS WIFE BE ALLOWED TO BE?

Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira (more simply, Teresa Simões-Ferreira) was born to Portuguese parents in Mozambique, which was a colony of Portugal at the time. Her father was Dr. José Simões-Ferreira, and her mother was Irene Thierstein.
She grew up in Mozambique's capital, Lourenço Marques (now called Maputo). Her father was a medical doctor, and "Teresinha" (the diminutive of Teresa in Portuguese) led a relatively privileged lifestyle. Her father would, however, often bring her along on his calls into the African bush, where she witnessed how those of lesser means lived.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Romance Languages and literature from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She graduated from the Interpreters School of the University of Geneva (Switzerland) before moving to the United States to work at the United Nations as a translator. She is fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, and her native Portuguese.
Marriages and OffspringSimões-Ferreira married Senator Henry John Heinz III of the ketchup Heinzes on February 5, 1966 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A few years after the marriage, in 1971, she became a naturalized United States citizen. The couple had three sons: John Heinz IV (born 1967), Andre Heinz (born 1970) and Christopher Drake Heinz (born 1973).


Mrs. Heinz met John Kerry in 1990 at an Earth Day rally, after being introduced by Senator Heinz. This was the only known time that she and John Kerry met before the death of Senator Heinz. After Senator Heinz died in an airplane crash on April 4, 1991 in Pennsylvania, Mrs. Heinz inherited his vast fortune. She and John Kerry ran into each other again at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 at the Earth Summit, which Ms. Heinz attended as a member of a State Department delegation by appointment by President George H. W. Bush. Their courtship began in 1993, and they were married on May 26, 1995 on Nantucket, Massachusetts. This was also the second marriage for Senator Kerry.

Heinz Kerry is the life estate beneficiary or outright beneficiary of her husband's trusts, making her either extremely wealthy in her own name, or powerful as a trustee of Heinz family wealth. Sen. Kerry is wealthy in his own right, though not to the same degree, since he became a trust fund beneficiary of his mother's and Forbes family trusts. Sen. Kerry and Heinz Kerry signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate.
To date, she has declined to disclose her personal tax returns, citing family trusts and privacy. She is estimated to be worth in between 750 million and 1 billion dollars. According to her most recently released income tax of 2003, the Kerry's paid an effective federal income tax rate of 12%. Most of her income was derived from tax free municipal bonds, which explains the low rate. Critics of Senator Kerry use this fact to paint him as a hypocrite for favoring increasing taxes on the upper middle class.

Heinz Kerry was a registered Republican for most of her voting career, and her first husband, Senator Heinz, ran as a Republican. In January of 2003, she changed her registration to the Democratic Party. Heinz Kerry has stated that she switched party affiliations to protest the campaign tactics Republican Saxby Chambliss used against Democrat Max Cleland in the 2002 Georgia senatorial election. Many, including Heinz Kerry, felt that advertisements by the Chambliss campaign questioned (by innuendo) the patriotism of Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran. When interviewed about the registration change, she remarked: "Let me just say having been married to a Republican, wonderful man, who was the old kind of Republican that we used to have once upon a time, the Republicanism of this administration is neither Republican nor conservative. There are good people in both parties. These people are not Republicans."
It is unknown what registration, if any, her sons hold. However, Chris and André Heinz both spoke at the Democratic National Convention in July of 2004; John Heinz IV keeps a lower profile.
Should Senator Kerry be elected President, Mrs. Heinz Kerry will be only the second foreign-born First Lady of the United States, after the British-born Louisa Adams, wife of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820's.




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