“If I were them, I’d use this,” said Clymer, a former Crimson president. “I’d use it in direct mail.”

Kerry’s conservative opponents have already begun painting the Massachusetts senator and former deputy governor as an elite, New England liberal, and his 21-year voting record in the Senate may provide considerable ammunition.

Madden said the Bush campaign would highlight Kerry’s Senate votes should he win the Democratic nomination.

And Reich forecasted G.O.P. research would extend far beyond Capitol Hill.

“If Kerry is the nominee, Republicans will try and search back into everything he ever said on every issue,” Reich predicted.

Kerry’s 1970 remarks to Goldhaber portray a fiery, novice politician inspired by his opposition to the Vietnam War.

“He struck me as very ambitious,” Goldhaber said yesterday. “He struck me as the sort of person—even back then, newly returned from Vietnam—who was thinking about running for president.”

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.