John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign

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John Kerry for President 2004
General election logo Primary campaign logo
Campaign	2004 Democratic primaries 2004 U.S. presidential election
Candidate	John Kerry U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1985–2013) John Edwards U.S. Senator from North Carolina (1999–2005)
Affiliation	Democratic Party
Status	Announced: September 2, 2003 Presumptive nominee: March 2, 2004 Official nominee: July 29, 2004 Lost election: November 3, 2004
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts
Key people	Mary Beth Cahill (Manager) Bob Shrum (Consultant)
Slogan	A Stronger America Let America Be America Again Stronger at Home, Respected in the World[1]
Website
www.johnkerry.com (original site via the Internet Archive.)

The 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry, the longtime U.S. senator from Massachusetts, began when he formed an exploratory committee on December 1, 2002. On September 2, 2003, he formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.^[2] After beating John Edwards, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and other candidates in the primaries, he became the Democratic nominee, challenging Republican incumbent George W. Bush in the general election. Kerry selected Edwards as his running mate.

Kerry conceded defeat in a telephone call to Bush at around 11 a.m. EST (16:00 UTC) on the morning of November 3, 2004. Had Kerry won, he would have been the first incumbent senator since John F. Kennedy to be elected president. Edwards would have been the first vice president from North Carolina. Kerry was the most recent Democratic presidential nominee to lose both the electoral vote and the popular vote until Kamala Harris in 2024 against Republican former president Donald Trump.

Edwards would run for president again in the 2008 Democratic primary, finishing third. That year's Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, became the third senator elected president after Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. After Obama's reelection in 2012, he nominated Kerry as Secretary of State.