EDITORIAL – Anti-ketchup campaign smears Heinz Kerry

Ketchup has generally been considered one of the more nonpartisan condiments. It’s gooey, it… Ketchup has generally been considered one of the more nonpartisan condiments. It’s gooey, it comes in a rainbow of colors and it tastes good on just about anything, especially French — yes, French — fries.

But New York assemblyman James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, has badmouthed the condiment that has made Pittsburgh so tasty for the past 135 years, saying that he would boycott ketchup — Heinz ketchup, to be specific. He added that eating Heinz-brand ketchup is tacitly voting for John Kerry, because of Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Most would agree that actually voting for Kerry would be a better way to show support for Kerry, and that eating Heinz is tantamount to dressing up a hot dog. Deeper than that, though, is the kind of bizarre, grasping-at-straws tactics that Tedisco resorted to in order to get people to vote his way. After all, no Democratic representatives have proposed boycotting the letter ‘w’ or avoiding taking headache medicine — since George W. Bush has ties to many large pharmaceutical companies — in order to show support for Kerry.

Moreover, Heinz Kerry married into the family — she married Sen. John Heinz, a Republican from Pennsylvania, in 1966; he died in a plane crash in 1991, and she married Kerry in 1995. Heinz Kerry, and the foundations and trusts that she chairs, do not hold a significant share of ownership in the Heinz Corp., according to the Associate Press. So the company is officially nonpartisan.

Also, Heinz makes a panoply of products, including Weight Watchers meals and baby food. Does the good assemblyman really want to criticize dieters and babies, and tell them not to eat, for the good of their country? Somehow, we think not.

Perhaps more importantly, New York isn’t a swing state; Pennsylvania is. Pissing off key voters by criticizing a food company synonymous with Pittsburgh is not the way to get people living here to vote for Bush.

Finally, this move, along with the company marketing W Ketchup — America’s ketchup, the Web site brags — is a repeat of the “freedom fries” incident. And that wasn’t exactly our country’s proudest moment.

Eating Heinz ketchup is not a political statement; it’s a statement that sometimes food tastes better when it has ketchup on it. And that’s a statement all Americans can support.