Did Columnist Get Kerry Into Pub To Watch The Pack?

By: Erin Olson Susan Lampert Smith, a columnist for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, was sprawled on her couch in Mount Horeb on Sunday afternoon, like so many others in her state, watching the Green Bay Packers and looking forward to a nap.

Suddenly, as she tells it, the phone rang and her friend Mary was on the line. "John Kerry's at the Main Street Pub watching the Packers," Mary told her.

"I just thought she was pulling my leg," Smith told E&P Monday. Smith had written a column for that day's State Journal challenging the pointy-headed Kerry to visit a small-town Wisconsin beer joint, watch the Pack and buy a round for the bar, because, as she sees it, he's "got to start acting more like a regular guy. Bush is really good at acting like a regular guy even though he's not."

Then Smith heard some chanting in the background. Suspecting there might be some truth to her friend's story, she headed to the pub, where she found gawkers, cops and Secret Service types.

Sure enough, Kerry himself emerged, waving and shaking hands as he made his way up Main Street to Schubert's caf?. Apparently Kerry picked up a chocolate malted there and then left town, after the 40-minute stopover.

When Smith entered the tavern, a place she and her family frequent for Friday night fish fries, she spotted a copy of Sunday's State Journal on the bar. She was told that Kerry came for the kickoff, bought a round, and split. "It was a little freaky," she told E&P. "I have no power in real life; I can't make my kids do anything, but I can make a presidential candidate buy a beer."

Smith said she had no actual confirmation from the Kerry campaign that his actions were inspired by her column. Still, she joked, "I think he should hire me as his Midwestern adviser."

Bartender Sheila Meyers told her Kerry had a Leinenkugel's and a cheeseburger. The Associated Press would later move a photo of Kerry in the bar, lifting a stein.

Then, on Monday, according to Smith, Kerry waved a copy of a newspaper showing such a photo to the crowd at a rally elsewhere in the state. "He was holding it up and saying, 'See? I went to a bar and drank a Leinenkugel's,'" Smith said.

Smith wrote her piece "more tongue-in-cheek," she said, not expecting Kerry to act on it. Reviewing her experience in a column on Monday, she asked, "What if I had suggested that Kerry wear a hula skirt and dance on Main Street?"