Campaign chief MARY BETH CAHILL 'completely liberated me to focus,' Kerry tells TIME.

New York –To reduce fighting within John Kerry's presidential campaign, Mary Beth Cahill practically took away his cellphone: "It's really important to him that his daughters be able to reach him," Cahill says, "but I did definitely cut down on the calls where you don't like a decision, call John and reopen it. That doesn't happen anymore."

Few operatives can match Cahill's record of for turning around campaigns that are just this side of hopeless, TIME natiional political correspondent Karen Tumulty writes.

"She felt it was winnable," Kerry tells TIME of his decision in November to hire away Senator Edward Kennedy's chief of staff. "She distinctly felt that, as I did, But we knew we have to make some adjustments," Kerry said.

Three months later, Kerry finds himself with 18 primaries and caucus wins. "Campaigns are won by candidates, of course, but someone had to come up with and stick to a plan that would have Kerry standing in just the right spot if lightning struck," Tumulty writes.

“It just liberated me,” Kerry tells TIME of Cahill's arrival. “It completely liberated me to focus on my message and focus on the energy I needed to put into day-to-day campaigning and on the people I was meeting. To not be distracted, to be able to really just give it 100% focus, which is what it takes. It helped to make me a better candidate.”

Cahill, 49 with a prematurely white hair, attributes her bossiness to being eldest of six children. She says she honed her political reflexes at a dinner table in Dorchester where "you were expected to have an opinion and you were expected to be able to defend it."

Contact:

Diana Pearson

212-522-0833

Diana_Pearson@timeinc.com

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