Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls companies and chief executives "Benedict Arnolds" if they move jobs and operations overseas to avoid paying US taxes

But Kerry has accepted money and fund-raising assistance from top executives at companies that fit the candidate's description of a notorious traitor.

Executives and employees at such companies have contributed more than $140,000 to Kerry's presidential campaign, a review of his donor records show. Additionally, two of Kerry's biggest fund-raisers, who together have raised more than $400,000 for the candidate, are top executives at investment firms that helped set up companies in the world's best-known offshore tax havens, federal records show. Kerry has raised nearly $30 million overall for his White House run.

Kerry has taken aim at "Benedict Arnold" companies as part of a much broader political and policy debate over stemming the flow of well-paying US jobs overseas, a chief cause of unemployment, especially in the hardest-hit manufacturing sector. Kerry's solution, detailed in a speech yesterday in Toledo, Ohio, is to enforce trade agreements, track and slow the outsourcing of US jobs, and stop providing government contracts and tax incentives to companies that move operations or jobs offshore.