WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls companies and chief executives "Benedict Arnolds" if they move jobs and operations overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
But Kerry has accepted money and fund-raising assistance from top executives at companies that fit the candidate's description of a notorious traitor.
Executives and employees at such companies have contributed more than $140,000 to Kerry's presidential campaign, a review of his donor records show.
Additionally, two of Kerry's biggest fund-raisers, who together have raised more than $400,000 for the candidate, are top executives at investment firms that helped set up companies in the world's best-known offshore tax havens, federal records show.
Kerry has raised nearly $30 million overall for his White House run.
Kerry has taken aim at "Benedict Arnold" companies as part of a much broader political and policy debate over stemming the flow of good-paying U.S. jobs overseas, a chief cause of unemployment, especially in the hardest-hit manufacturing sector.
Kerry's solution, detailed in a speech Wednesday in Toledo, Ohio, is to enforce trade agreements, track and slow the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and stop providing government contracts and tax incentives to companies that move operations or jobs offshore.
In Toledo, Kerry said he would require companies to give their employees a three-month warning before sending their jobs abroad, blaming President Bush for job losses in an appeal to displaced workers in the Democratic battleground state of Ohio.
The Massachusetts senator said he will require companies that ship jobs offshore to tell the Labor Department and the workers when, where and why the jobs are moving.
"Companies will no longer be able to surprise their workers with a pink slip instead of a paycheck," he said.
Kerry has come under attack from President Bush, as well as some Democrats, for criticizing laws he voted for and lambasting special interests after accepting more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years.
Some Democrats worry that Kerry is opening himself for similar attacks on the latest issue.
One of Kerry's biggest fund-raisers is David Roux, co-founder of a California company that helped purchase Seagate Technology Inc. four years ago and incorporated it in the Cayman Islands, one of the world's best-known tax havens.
Another fund-raiser, Tom Steyer, is partner at a California investment firm called Hellman & Friedman that helped set up an insurance company in Bermuda, another popular tax haven.
