Sept. 11 Widow Joins Campaign
Families of Victims Bring Their Passion and Grief to Partisan Fray
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A20
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 28 -- Before Sept. 11, 2001, all Kristen Breitweiser wanted in the way of worldly responsibility was to tend to her garden and care for her infant daughter, Caroline.
"After watching my husband get murdered on live worldwide television," she said, everything changed.
On Tuesday, the 33-year-old New Jersey widow was stumping in swing states with Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards for the second day in a row. It's here that Breitweiser's fresh face and emotional story are becoming an integral part of an effort to convince "security moms" that the Democratic ticket of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Edwards can make them safer and that four more years with President Bush is dangerous.
Wearing her husband's wedding band, the only evidence of his life to be recovered at Ground Zero, Breitweiser said she steeled herself to hit the campaign trail this week with Edwards, a North Carolina senator. She fought back a fear of flying born out of the World Trade Center disaster and overcame her jitters about public speaking to become a blunt instrument of attack against a president she once supported.
"I would love to have heard President Bush and the Republicans in Congress say, 'Here's what we'll do better.' But they didn't do that. They circled the wagons, they stonewalled, they blocked, they foot-dragged," she said in an interview aboard the Edwards campaign plane....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58043-2004Sep28.html 
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