He is Chris Heinz, the 30-year-old son of Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. He has quit his job as a venture capitalist to work as a fund-raiser and surrogate speaker for his stepfather's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Like his mother, Heinz is convinced that Kerry has the international perspective needed to be an effective president in the post-Sept. 11 world. Yet his work is aimed not only at helping Kerry, but also at examining the machinations of a national campaign as a precursor to launching his own political career.

"I definitely want to see how this process turns out, but I would just say heretofore, the process has only made me more keen to do it," Heinz said in an interview at a Midtown Manhattan hotel.

Should he run, Heinz said, it would probably be for a congressional seat in his family's stronghold in Western Pennsylvania. And it would be as a Democrat. That would be a switch from his father, the late Senator John Heinz, a Pittsburgh Republican who was killed in a collision between his airplane and a helicopter in 1991. But it would be in line with his mother's decision this year to register as a Democrat after concluding that the GOP had become too conservative and intolerant.

"I exist in the middle," Chris Heinz said. "I think both parties have parts of their platform that are irresponsible. I tend to think that the Democratic Party, where it's irresponsible, is more well-meaning."

A multimillionaire through inheritance, Heinz has nonetheless been committed to building his own business career, in part because he believes it a prerequisite to success in politics.

"People who are in the government who don't feel like they have another vocation available to them, or don't have the self-confidence of being able to make money on their own, start making poor decisions," he said.

Although they did not meet until the early 1990s, Chris Heinz and John Kerry have parallels. Both attended the Potomac School in suburban Washington before completing their prep careers at St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H. Both also graduated from Yale, an alma mater shared with John Heinz, and both have an affinity for skiing and lacrosse.

Among the ironies of the Heinz-Kerry relationship is the affinity Chris Heinz feels for George H. W. Bush. It is an outgrowth of the time he and his late father spent with the former president at Camp David, as well as his respect for Bush's international view -- a perspective Heinz feels is lost on Bush's son.

"I think the way he saw the world, for a guy coming out of the Cold War, and a Republican, was very progressive," Heinz said of the elder Bush. "It's interesting the son seems less progressive 10 years after the Cold War."

For more info you can go here.